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Sunday 1 January 2012

Know when mortality increases and try to prevent it

When junior doctor changes over (in UK it is usually February, August and a couple of other months), there is a higher mortality.
Weekends have a higher mortality.
Major operations on a Friday have a higher mortality.
Winter has a higher mortality.

There are other mortality peaks as well. The question is not what the 'evidence' is around this topic. The question is 'Does it happen in your hospital?'. Do you know? If you don't know - should you know? If you know that you have such a peak in mortality, what are you doing about it? What can be done about it? (If you know you do not have such a peak - do you know how you managed to avoid it?)

These types of mortality cannot be made better by 'better coding' and by 'building hospices'. But can certainly be dealt with by taking specific preventative upstream action.

Take care. Take preventative upstream action.

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