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Research has clearly demonstrated a correlation between admission to hospitals at weekends and death rates. But the other important inpatient situation is patients who are placed, as a result of bed management, as outliers not in the appropriate specialized ward but in other specialties' wards unrelated to their clinical condition as a result of shortage of beds or mismatch between demand and capacity. This clearly may have a detrimental effect on patient outcome and mortality. Research needs to be conducted in order to provide the evidence of which the outcome is already obvious to us as clinicians.
Competing interests:
No competing interests
29 November 2015
Walid Al-Wali
Consultant Medical Microbiologist and Director for Infection Prevention and Control ( Former Medical Director 2001-2011)
Four things Jeremy Hunt needs to get right. Apart from weekend mortality, what about mortality of outlier inpatients?
Research has clearly demonstrated a correlation between admission to hospitals at weekends and death rates. But the other important inpatient situation is patients who are placed, as a result of bed management, as outliers not in the appropriate specialized ward but in other specialties' wards unrelated to their clinical condition as a result of shortage of beds or mismatch between demand and capacity. This clearly may have a detrimental effect on patient outcome and mortality. Research needs to be conducted in order to provide the evidence of which the outcome is already obvious to us as clinicians.
Competing interests: No competing interests