Background: The Institute for Healthcare Improvement tells us that successful discharge planning starts at admission; however, when that admission occurs to a closed Intensive Care Unit (ICU), traditional discharge planning can be delayed until the patient transfers to a general floor. This delay can be exacerbated as a hospital’s adult medical-surgical bed occupancy rises, increasing [...]

Background: Most medical centers have limited ICU beds to directly admit high acuity patients from the emergency department. This is compounded by the trend towards increased medical acuity. Thus, rising numbers of patients with higher acuity are being admitted to general medical units and later requiring transfer to ICU. These patients have higher in-hospital mortality [...]

Background: Coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) is a novel widespread disease that has a range of manifestation from asymptomatic to fatal. In the United States, there have been approximately 396,000 hospitalizations as of this writing, of which an estimated 25% will require the intensive care unit (ICU)1,2. With the ongoing spread and repeated waves of [...]

Background: Numerous early warning systems (EWS) exist as potential tools to improve patient safety. Our system recognized higher than peer rates of rapid response (RRT) utilization as well as higher than desired out-of-ICU code blue rates leading to a desire to implement a EWS system. Over a three-year period we reviewed the literature, developed, and [...]

Background: Prolonged intensive care unit (ICU) length of stay (LOS) has been shown to delay patients’ recovery, increase their exposure to the risk of infections, upsurge healthcare costs, and reduce care availability to other critically ill patients. ICU LOS is directly influenced by both medical and institutional factors. The aim of the project is to [...]

Background: It is common for Inter-Intensive Care Unit (ICU) transfers between hospitals to take place to provide a patient with a higher level of care to improve clinical outcomes. The decision to transfer ICU patients is not standardized and leads to a wide variability in transfer practice patterns. This may lead to higher cost, burden [...]

Background: Rapid Response Teams (RRTs), also known as medical emergency or patient response teams, are widely implemented in hospitals to improve patient outcomes. Existing literature demonstrates that RRTs reduce in-hospital mortality, cardiac arrest, and unplanned ICU admissions. However, less is known about the outcomes of patients transferred to the ICU following an RRT activation. At [...]