Does the day a child is discharged from the hospital influence his chances of being readmitted for the same illness? Adults who are discharged on a Friday are more likely to be readmitted during the following 30 days than adults discharged mid-week. The reason is that doctors try hard to discharge patients before the weekend Ð and sometimes they send adult patients home before they are well enough to go.
To see if the same occurs in pediatric discharges, doctors in Ontario, Canada, analyzed the hospital records of 342,255 children who, between 1996 and 2000, were admitted to the hospital a total of 505,891 times. Only 3.3% of these children were readmitted to the hospital during the 30 days following their discharge. The day of discharge had no effect on whether the child was readmitted to the hospital.
Pediatric Notes, 7/17/03, p. 113.
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