Hospital Admissions: If you’re one of nine, try to cancel

A word to the wise:  if you’re being admitted to hospital, check how many others are arriving on the same day.  If it’s more than nine, try to make it a different day.

Every hospital admission dramatically increases the hospital house staff’s work for that day – and you increase the chances of poor healthcare if you arrive the same time as too many others. Worse, you even increase your chances of dying while in hospital.

A new study has discovered that the number of hospital admissions has a direct bearing on care and even if you get out of the place alive.

Researchers analysed the progress of 5,742 patients who were admitted to a training hospital between 1998 and 2001.  They found that the hospital’s breaking point was coping with nine admissions a day.  Each of those nine was more than one times more likely to die in the hospital than a patient admitted on a quieter day.

(Source: Archives of Internal Medicine, 2007; 167: 47-52).

 
E-news broadcast 15 March 2007 No.342 [Subscribe]