Investigator University of Pennsylvania, United States
Introduction: The phrase “July Residents” is widely used throughout the medical community to describe the new influx of inexperienced residents in the month of July. It is thought that during this month, patients are at a higher risk of harm from these providers. Our study aimed to evaluate whether patients who had malignant hyperthermia in the month of July had increased mortality, length of stay, or total charges for patients compared to that of other months.
Methods: The National Inpatient Sample (NIS) database (2016-2020) was analyzed to identify adults admitted with the ICD-10 diagnostic/procedural codes for malignant hyperthermia. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to obtain the effects of month of year on mortality, length of stay, and total charges for hospital charges for patients. Weighted analysis using Stata 17 MP was performed.
Results: Sample size was not high enough to report on mortality.
We found that there was a shorter LOS in July (-6.52, p< 0.05, CI -9.96 - -3.08) compared to that of non-July months. Similarly, there was a significantly lower TOTCHG in July (-$138,430.40, p< 0.05, CI -204,056.80 - -72,803.98) compared to that of non-July months.
Conclusions: Our study found that, while there may be more inexperienced physicians in the month of July, patients in July actually had a shorter LOS and TOTCHG when compared to that of non-July months. We attempted to compare mortality, however, the sample size was not high enough to obtain statistically significant data for that comparison. Further studies are warranted to evaluate for the reason patients have better outcomes when looking at LOS and TOTCHG in the month of July versus non-July months.
