Much has been made of the recent paper in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine which shows a significant increased risk of dying within 30 days of admission if you are admitted on a Saturday or, particularly, a Sunday compared to being admitted on a Wednesday.
For every 100 deaths within 30 days of admission on a Wednesday there would be 116 deaths among patients admitted on a Sunday.
But the reality is that out of a total of 14.2 million admissions looked at the overall death rate wasjust under 285,000 which equated to about 2% of total admissions.
If a Wednesday admission carries with it an "average" 30 day mortality rate of 2% then a Sunday admission would carry with it a risk of 2.32%.
Or, to put it another way, if your are admitted on a Wednesday your chances of still being alive after 30 days would be 98%. But if it was a Sunday your chances of still being alive in 30 days would be 97.68%.
When put like that it seems to me that there is little to be scared of.
Or am I misunderstanding it all?