Why the study?
Does ICU admission compared to non-ICU admission affect hospital charges and long-term survival in patients from a community hospital?
Does ICU admission compared to non-ICU admission affect hospital charges and long-term survival in patients from a community hospital?
Long-term survival for ICU patients discharged alive from a community hospital is similar to that of non-ICU patients, suggesting the long-term outlook after intensive care is better than generally assumed.
Answers are grounded in this paper and cite their sources.
Supports favorable post-discharge prognosis after ICU; leaves open causal effects of admission on long-term survival.
Hospital charges and long-term (2 yr) survival were evaluated for 558 ICU and 124 non-ICU patients from a large community hospital. Although the ICU patients represented only 9.5% of total hospital admissions, they incurred nearly 30% of the total hospital charges and had a median hospital charge of greater than four times the non-ICU comparison group. For the ICU patients, the overall in-hospital mortality rate was 17.3% and the overall 2-yr mortality rate was 35.6%, whereas the non-ICU group rates were 3.4 and 14.8% respectively. Given a patient was discharged alive from the hospital, the proportion surviving an additional 2 yr was strikingly similar for the two groups (83.3% of ICU patients and 89.1% of non-ICU patients). Because of excess mortality for ICU patients, discharged from a community hospital was not significantly greater than for non-ICU patients, the long-term outlook for discharged patients after receiving intensive care is not as bleak as is generally assumed.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Parno et al. (1982) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched 10 related papers. Consider them for comparative context: