Risks of Friday discharges: Meaningful?

Axel Ellrodt is correct when he points out the small absolute differences in adjusted 30-day death or urgent readmission. Overall, the event rate was 7.1%. A 4% relative increase brings the event rate up to 7.2%. This is a small increase. The table in our study shows that day of discharge has a weaker association with outcome than the other factors we studied.¹

We believe that the importance of our findings will stem from an exploration of why such differences exist. We believe that further study is required to determine if the care of patients discharged on a Friday systematically differs from that of patients discharged on other days and, if so, whether this explains the difference in outcomes. We hope this will shed more light on why bad things happen to some patients and identify interventions to improve patient outcomes.

Carl van Walraven Physician and Scientist Ottawa Health Research Institute Ottawa, Ont.