Hospital charges and long-term survival of ICU versus non-ICU patients.
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.
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D005249:Fees and Charges; D005260:Female; D006746:Hospital Bed Capacity, 500 and over; D006801:Humans; D007362:Intensive Care Units / Q000191:economics*; D008297:Male; D008404:Massachusetts; D008875:Middle Aged; D009026:Mortality; D010043:Outcome and Process Assessment, Health Care; D010343:Patient Admission / Q000191:economics; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D013997:Time Factors