Docs on the Clock: Would Weekend Shifts Boost Health Care?

(Oct. 4) -- If Americans are serious about improving health care, they may need to ask for some serious lifestyle changes from their medical providers: Docs might need to sacrifice the standard Saturday-Sunday weekend to boost patient care and save money.

It's a controversial idea, but one that Peter Orszag, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, sees as a worthwhile experiment in the ongoing efforts to patch up our country's flailing health care programs.

Writing in today's New York Times, Orszag describes the changes being introduced at New York University's Langone Medical Center as emblematic of the shift that he'd like to see nationwide.

"N.Y.U.'s first step toward seven-day service has been to keep certain functions going all weekend, like radiology study interpretation, magnetic resonance imaging and elective cardiac surgery," he writes. "So far, the doctors involved are on board."

Studies have already warned that weekends can be deadlier than usual in emergency rooms. A patient admitted for a heart attack, for example, is more likely to succumb to the event and less likely to receive timely, life-saving surgery.

Not to mention, Orszag points out, that leaving expensive equipment idle for two days a week is a major financial waste.

"If hospitals were in constant use, costs would fall as expensive assets like operating rooms and imaging equipment were used more fully," he writes.

At NYU Langone, administrators are also instituting new management tools, like a dashboard to keep tabs on expenses, readmission rates and quality of care.

The move makes pragmatic sense, and would also help hospitals identify whether keeping weekend hours pays dividends, both financially and for patient health.

NYU, for one, hasn't yet seen major improvements from the changes. But in a time of ongoing flux and uncertainty in health care policy, trying something new seems like a worthwhile endeavor.

"In health care," Orszag writes, "experimentation is the mother of improvement."