This editorial analyzes the use of in-hospital mortality as an indicator of healthcare quality and patient safety. While such data are readily available and useful for monitoring healthcare services, in-hospital mortality is a complex measure influenced by many factors, including patient age, sex, type of admission, and existing comorbidities.
The journal invited us to write this editorial to introduce a study by Walicka et al., which analyzed a large set of Polish hospital records and demonstrated that higher in-hospital mortality was associated with advanced age, male sex, emergency admission, and weekend admission. We emphasize that these results should be interpreted with caution and considered within a broader context, as differences in patient populations and hospital departments can significantly affect mortality rates. I was invited to contribute to this work by Professor Małgorzata Bała of Jagiellonian University in Krakow. Participating in this work was particularly interesting, as it dealt with a subject I had not worked on previously.