Summary
This publication of the Seven-day Services indicators relates to activity in the period January 2014 to December 2014.
In July 2015 the Secretary of State for Health, Jeremy Hunt, delivered a speech 'Making healthcare more human-centred and not system-centred' (link provided in Related Links). In this speech, he outlined his commitment to seven-day care and highlighted variation in outcomes associated with weekend hospitalisation.
The experimental statistics presented in this report are being published to provide a starting point for discussions on how we can effectively measure both improvement and variation in care provision across the week.
Statistics about emergency readmissions by day of discharge and length of stay in hospital for emergency admissions by day of admission are included in this initial publication. Statistics examining mortality by day of admission are planned for future releases of this series.
Users of these experimental statistics were invited to comment on these findings. In particular, we invited users to consider how they would use this information to improve care, and how NHS Digital could improve these statistics to provide better information to drive improvements in care. A link to the findings of this user feedback can be found in the 'Resources' section of this page.
Key Facts
Emergency readmissions within seven days of discharge from hospital:
• The rate of emergency readmissions within seven days of discharge increased over the week from a low of 3.6 per cent for discharges on Mondays and Tuesdays to a high of 5.8 per cent for discharges on Sundays.
• The overall rate of emergency readmissions within seven days of discharge from hospital on a weekend was 5.2 per cent, 1.5 percentage points higher than the corresponding rate for discharges during the rest of the week (3.7 per cent).
Length of stay following an emergency admission to hospital:
• Nationally, there is a small amount of variation in the distribution of length of stay by day of admission, ranging from 48 per cent of discharges following an emergency admission on a Saturday having a length of stay of 0 or 1 days to 52 per cent of discharges following an emergency admission on a Thursday having a length of stay of 0 or 1 days, a range of 4 percentage points.
Last edited: 15 March 2018 1:53 pm