Appleby certainly raises some interesting points about the likely cost of producing what the Government calls a "7/7 service", but, although he asserts that age, sex comorbidities and diagnosis were taken into account in the production of the data taken from the HSCIC report (ref 13) to which he refers, he does not question why emergency admission rates over the weekend are approximately 23% higher than those on weekdays. Since one would expect emergency cases to be equally spread over the week the difference is daily admission rates is very suggestive that the populations are different. I can see no evidence within the HSCIC summary that any attempt was made to apply ASA or APACHE scoring to the admissions. Unless this was done we are comparing apples and pears!
Rapid Response:
Re: A 7/7 NHS: what price equity?
Sir,
Appleby certainly raises some interesting points about the likely cost of producing what the Government calls a "7/7 service", but, although he asserts that age, sex comorbidities and diagnosis were taken into account in the production of the data taken from the HSCIC report (ref 13) to which he refers, he does not question why emergency admission rates over the weekend are approximately 23% higher than those on weekdays. Since one would expect emergency cases to be equally spread over the week the difference is daily admission rates is very suggestive that the populations are different. I can see no evidence within the HSCIC summary that any attempt was made to apply ASA or APACHE scoring to the admissions. Unless this was done we are comparing apples and pears!
Competing interests: No competing interests