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The authors of this paper advise an economic evaluation to ensure that any reorganisation would represent an efficient use of scarce resources - is anyone able to provide a reference for this? Best wishes Catey Sent from my iPad On 20 Jul 2015, at 14:46, John Whittington <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote: There seems to be a fair bit of speculation on the part of people who have presumably not read the paper which gave rise to the statistics being quoted by politicians. I believe that the paper is question (full text) is probably this (2012) paper is: http://jrs.sagepub.com/content/105/2/74.full It was far from being 'Mickey Mouse' research, and many of the potential covariates/factors were taken into account. It does seem that a decades-old wheel that has been re-invented. I was a junior hospital doctor in the 70s and 80s and it was 'well-recognised even then that the service being provided to patients with serious illnesses admitted at weekends was far from ideal. The main perceived problem then (and perhaps still now) was not so much the lack of senior medical presence (although that was even worse then than it is now), but the very poor (in some cases nearly non-existant) availability of support services over the weekend. If a patient was admitted after 5pm on a Friday evening it was often a seriously uphill struggle to get even the most basic of investigations/tests (blood tests, X-rays etc) done until the following Monday morning. Kind Regards, John At 12:46 20/07/2015 +0100, Alix Naylor wrote: The thing that most annoyed me about this was that the report I read (on the bbc) stated that the research that had come up with this, if I remember correctly it was British journal of medical research (or similar), couldn't conclude that this was only from being admitted on a Sunday and may be from other factors. This suggests the 'research' was barely anything more than comparing proportions without even doing basic analysis on the presumably numerous potential control variables. What is even more ridiculous is they just compared Sunday admissions to Wednesday, so they cant even conclude what they are concluding that 'being admitted at the weekend (actually no, just Sunday)gives a higher chance of dying than being admitted during the week (no, just than on a Wednesday). I'm glad someone posted something on this as reading the article made me furious! Sent from my Windows Phone ________________________________ From: Krys Kelly<mailto:[log in to unmask]> Sent: ?EUR?20/?EUR?07/?EUR?2015 12:07 To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> Subject: NHS Weekend Working The following is a quote from Jeremy Hunt's speech last week: "You are 15% more likely to die if you are admitted on a Sunday compared to being admitted on a Wednesday" Presumably, if you are admitted at the weekend, you are sicker than someone who is admitted on a Wednesday. Does anyone know who produced this statistic and how? Has it been adjusted for covariates (e.g. performance status)? Krys Kelly Plant Sciences University of Cambridge John ---------------------------------------------------------------- Dr John Whittington, Voice: +44 (0) 1296 730225 Mediscience Services Fax: +44 (0) 1296 738893 Twyford Manor, Twyford, E-mail: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> Buckingham MK18 4EL, UK ---------------------------------------------------------------- You may leave the list at any time by sending the command SIGNOFF allstat to [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>, leaving the subject line blank. You may leave the list at any time by sending the command SIGNOFF allstat to [log in to unmask], leaving the subject line blank.