Summary
This publication of the Seven-day Services indicators relates to activity in the period July 2014 to June 2015.
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 publication. Statistics examining mortality by day of admission are planned for future releases of this series.
Users of these experimental statistics are invited to comment on these findings. In particular, we invite users to consider how they can use this information to improve care, and how NHS Digital can improve these statistics to provide better information to drive improvements in care.
A summary of the feedback obtained from a user feedback survey inviting comments on the first release of these experimental statistics is available 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 3.2 per cent for discharges on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays to a high of 4.9 per cent for discharges on Sundays.
• The overall rate of emergency readmissions within seven days of discharge from hospital on a weekend was 4.4 per cent, 1.1 percentage points higher than the corresponding rate for discharges during the rest of the week (3.3 per cent).
• Due to changes in the methodology used for the calculation of the emergency readmissions indicator, these results are not comparable to those included in the previous edition of this publication. Further information is provided on our Methodological Changes webpage (link provided below).
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 47 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.
Last edited: 14 March 2018 9:35 am