This report by CHKS (part of Capita Health), analysed hospital activity across the week in order to highlight variation and help Trusts to see where efficiency improvements might be made. The report focussed on specific areas such as emergency patients,  elective patients,  maternity and births,  procedures and diagnostics. All analysis is based upon Hospital Episode Statistics data for  2011.

The analysis revealed that in diagnostics, for example, there are 86,000 diagnostic tests on Saturday and Sunday, compared with more than 234,000 on weekdays.

“Our analysis of hospital activity throughout the week shows that there is considerable variation between weekday and the weekend for elective admissions, elective discharges, elective caesareans, most procedures and diagnostics. With unprecedented pressure to reduce costs hospitals are going to have to consider how they can operate effectively across the week to iron out these variations” p8

See the report: Insight report. The weekly pulse. An analysis of hospital activity by day of the week. CHKS, June 2012