Table 4.

Effects of Weekend Admission on Medicare Expenditures and Patient Health Outcomes for Elderly Medicare AMI Patients Admitted through the Emergency Room, 1989–1998

	Dependent Variable
	ln (1-Year Inpatient Expenditure)	ln (1-Year Outpatient Expenditure)	AMI 365 Days	CHF 365 Days	Died 30 Days	Died 90 Days	Died 180 Days	Died 365 Days
Specification 1a
Weekend admission	−0.55**	−4.40**	−0.14**	0.20**	0.22**	0.27**	0.25**	0.38**
	(0.20)	(1.53)	(0.05)	(0.06)	(0.09)	(0.09)	(0.10)	(0.10)
Specification 1b
Weekend or Monday admission	0.16	−3.61**	−0.12**	0.20**	0.14*	−0.16*	0.19**	0.22**
	(0.18)	(1.39)	(0.05)	(0.06)	(0.08)	(0.08)	(0.09)	(0.09)
Specification 1c
Saturday admission	−0.60**	−2.72	−0.12*	0.10	0.07	0.10	0.11	0.23*
	(0.27)	(2.00)	(0.07)	(0.08)	(0.11)	(0.12)	(0.13)	(0.13)
Sunday admission	−0.49*	−6.09**	−0.15**	0.30**	0.37**	0.43**	0.39**	0.53**
	(0.26)	(2.00)	(0.07)	(0.08)	(0.11)	(0.12)	(0.13)	(0.13)
Specification 2
Weekend admission	−0.32	−5.92**	−0.01	0.18**	0.18*	0.27**	0.28**	0.36**
	(0.25)	(1.81)	(0.06)	(0.07)	(0.12)	(0.11)	(0.11)	(0.12)
Weekend admission* inpatient	−0.76*	5.06	−0.41**	0.06	0.14	−0.02	−0.09	0.06
Admission in prior year	(0.43)	(3.36)	(0.12)	(0.15)	(0.19)	(0.21)	(0.22)	(0.22)

Notes:

^**Significance at 5 percent level.

^*Significance at 10 percent level. All coefficients multiplied by 100 to facilitate interpretation. Coefficients are in percentage points. All models include controls for patient characteristics, hospital fixed effects, and year fixed effects which are allowed to vary by six MSA size categories. Heteroscedasticity-consistent standard errors are shown in parentheses. N = 201,225 in outpatient expenditure models, otherwise N = 922,074.

AMI, acute myocardial infarction; CHF, congestive heart failure.