The first two patients were admitted on the fourth day from the onset of symptoms, one on the third and the other on the second day following onset.
He was admitted on the third try, in 1984, and he graduated with a bachelor's degree in English in 1988.
In 2007 and 2008, there was little difference between patients admitted on the last Wednesday of July and those admitted on the first Wednesday in August (Table 1).
We found evidence that patients admitted on the first Wednesday in August have a higher early death rate in English hospitals compared with patients admitted on the previous Wednesday.
We have found that patients admitted on the first Wednesday in August have a higher death rate than those admitted on the last Wednesday in July in hospitals in England.
The odds of death for patients admitted on the first Wednesday in August was 6% higher (OR 1.06, 95% CI 1.00 to 1.15, p = 0.05) after controlling for year, gender, age, socio-economic deprivation and co-morbidity.
When subdivided into medical, surgical and neoplasm admissions, medical admissions admitted on the first Wednesday in August had an 8% (OR 1.08, 95% CI 1.01 to 1.16, p = 0.03) higher odds of death.
In the two cohorts derived from the two dates of admission, between 2000 and 2008, there were a total of 299,741 admissions (151,844 admitted on the last Wednesday in July and 147,897 admitted on the first Wednesday in August) and 4,409 deaths in hospital within a week of admission (2,182 for the former week and 2,227 for the latter week).
For the years 2007 and 2008 only, the odds of death for patients admitted on the first Wednesday in August was 5% higher than for patients admitted on the last Wednesday in July but this difference was not statistically significant (OR 1.05, 95% CI 0.93 to 1.19, p = 0.42).
Most deaths occurred within 48 hours and 40% of all deaths were among neonates admitted on the first day of life.
