With adjustment for patient factors, illness, and comorbidities, increased emergency calling rates were not associated with reduced in-hospital mortality. Efforts to increase calling rates do not seem warranted. We studied 441,029 patients from St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne. Median age was 61.0 years (interquartile range, 45–74 yr), 57.2% were men, and 0.70% died; monthly emergency calling rates varied between 9.21 and 30.69 (median 18.4) per 1,000 discharges. In-hospital mortality adjusted for age, gender, emergency status, same day admission, year of discharge, and Charlson Comorbidity Index was not reduced by higher calling rates in the month of discharge.

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