DundeeChest 3.0

Calm down dear, its only your 210th admission.

The more the merrier. Or if not merry, at least alive. That is the message from a recent paper in the New England Journal looking at the survival rates for common conditions depending on the patient load of the admitting hospital.  It would appear that having to admit yet another pneumonia is actually good for the health of the other four you already admitted this week. Looking at all the admissions through Medicare to US hospitals for MI, CCF and Pneumonia the authors found that the hospitals with the larger patient volume of each condition had improved 30 day survival for that particular illness. The improvement in mortality wasn’t relentless though, (otherwise we should have a giant überhospital for all UK pneumonia patients where no-one dies) given that they found once your hospital topped 210 pneumonia patients there was no further survival benefit. Mind you, EWTD means they are all probably clerked by the same lonely registrar…..