Implementation of a seven-day hospitalist program to improve the outcomes of the weekend admission: A retrospective before-after study in Taiwan

OBJECTIVE: Patients admitted during weekends may have worse outcomes than those during weekdays. Adjusting the practice of senior physicians over weekends may reduce the weekend effect. DESIGN: A controlled before-after study, with propensity score matching (PSM) for potential confounding variables, to compare outcomes between weekday and weekend admissions. SETTING: A 2000-bed medical centre in Taiwan PARTICIPANTS: Hospitalised general medicine patients cared for by traditional internal medicine teams (pre-intervention cohort) and those cared for by hospitalists after introducing a seven-day hospitalist program in the first six-month (post-intervention cohort) and following three-year periods. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Proportion of intensive care unit (ICU) admissions, cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) events, and in-hospital mortality. RESULTS: The pre-intervention cohort included 982 patients. Significantly higher mortality rates (11.3% vs. 6.2%, p = 0.032) were recorded in the case of weekend admissions, with similar proportions of ICU admission and CPR events. The post-intervention cohort included 601 patients. No significant difference was recorded in any of the main outcomes between weekday and weekend admissions. PSM for pre-intervention and post-intervention cohort showed shorter LOS after intervention, with no difference in ICU admission, CPR, and morality for the weekday and weekend admissions, respectively. The three-year cohort that followed, consisting of 3315 patients, showed no difference of outcomes between weekday and weekend admissions. After PSM, there were no significant differences in ICU admission rates (1.0% vs. 1.8%), CPR (0.3% vs. 0.2%) events and hospital mortality rates (8.1% vs. 8.5%), when weekday and weekend admissions were compared. CONCLUSIONS: The seven-day hospitalist program shows potential in providing equally safe care for both weekday and weekend general medicine admissions with sustainable development.