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When Intermountain Healthcare opened its new 448-bed flagship Intermountain Medical Center (IMED) in Murray, Utah, in 2007, the facility immediately attracted more patients than originally projected. Some patients were kept [...]

The need to increase capacity to meet growing service demand may seem like a good problem for hospitals to have, but costly approaches to expanding capacity--more space, beds, caregivers, and [...]

New treatments for atrial fibrillation provide promising opportunities to increase the efficiency of healthcare services while optimising the patient experience. However, research shows that current prescribing practice for this patient group is inconsistent and at odds with international guidelines.

An appreciation of a family's difficult experience in dealing with their critically ill loved ones has created the concept of ‘family-centered care’. The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on the needs of the family during their intensive care unit experience.

To measure the net benefit of a pharmacist-led medication review in acute public hospitals. To identify and measure the resources used when completing a pharmacist-led medication review, an observational study was conducted in an acute urban university teaching hospital. Health Information and Quality Authority guidelines were used to value resources used in a pharmacist-led medication review. Model inputs included demographic data, probability of adverse drug events associated with the pharmacist interventions, estimates of future discharges and cost data. The cost of a pharmacist-led medication review and savings generated from avoidance of adverse drug events were estimated and projected over a 5-year period, using hospital discharge rates taken from the hospital inpatient enquiry system and the census of population. Using the per-patient cost of a medication review, the annual cost of delivering a bi-weekly medication review is projected to vary between €6 m and €6.4 m over a 5-year period from 2017 to 2021. The per-patient net benefit of a bi-weekly medication review is €45.88. Therefore, the projected annual net benefit of a bi-weekly medication review is between €29.5 m and €31.2 m over the 5-year period of 2017 to 2021. Introducing a pharmacist-led medication review for each inpatient saves in the short and longer term. The results are consistent with previous findings. Substantial savings were estimated, regardless of variation in model parameters tested in sensitivity analysis.

Objective: To estimate the mortality and length of stay in the intensive care unit (ICU) attributable to clinically important gastrointestinal bleeding in mechanically ventilated critically ill patients. Design: Three strategies were used to estimate the mortality attributable to bleeding in two multicentre databases. The first method matched patients who bled with those who did not (matched cohort), using duration of ICU stay prior to the bleed, each of six domains of the Multiple Organ Dysfunction Score (MODS) measured 3 days prior to the bleed, APACHE II score, age, admitting diagnosis, and duration of mechanical ventilation. The second approach employed Cox proportional hazards regression to match bleeding and non-bleeding patients (model-based matched cohort). The third method, instead of matching, derived estimates based on regression modelling using the entire population (regression method). Three parallel analyses were conducted for the length of ICU stay attributable to clinically important bleeding. Setting: Sixteen Canadian university-affiliated ICUs. Patients: A total of 1666 critically ill patients receiving mechanical ventilation for at least 48 hours. Measurements: We prospectively collected data on patient demographics, APACHE II score, admitting diagnosis, daily MODS, clinically important bleeding, length of ICU stay, and mortality. Independent adjudicators determined the occurrence of clinically important gastrointestinal bleeding, defined as overt bleeding in association with haemodynamic compromise or blood transfusion. Results: Of 1666 patients, 59 developed clinically important gastrointestinal bleeding. The mean APACHE II score was 22.9 ± 8.6 among bleeding patients and 23.3 ± 7.7 among non-bleeding patients. The risk of death was increased in patients with bleeding using all three analytic approaches (matched cohort method: relative risk [RR]= 2.9, 95% confidence interval (CI)= 1.6–5.5; model-based matched cohort method: RR = 1.8, 95% CI = 1.1–2.9; and the regression method: RR = 4.1, 95% CI = 2.6–6.5). However, this was not significant for the adjusted regression method (RR = 1.0, 95% CI = 0.6–1.7). The median length of ICU stay attributable to clinically important bleeding for these three methods, respectively, was 3.8 days (95% CI = -0.01 to 7.6 days), 6.7 days (95% CI = 2.7–10.7 days), and 7.9 days (95% CI = 1.4–14.4 days). Conclusions: Clinically important upper gastrointestinal bleeding has an important attributable morbidity and mortality, associated with a RR of death of 1–4 and an excess length of ICU stay of approximately 4–8 days.