title: The use of intensive care: a comparison of a university and community hospital.
abstract: We compared 223 consecutive intensive care unit (ICU) admissions to a community hospital (CH) with 613 such admissions at a university hospital (UH) using a new clinical scale aimed at quantifying severity of illness. Both ICU's had similar technical resources and treatment capabilities. At the CH, however, patients were more often admitted for monitoring rather than for treatment of UH admissions had a substantially greater acute severity of illness (p less than .001) than CH patients in most diagnostic categories. These findings suggest that use of the ICU was substantially different in the two hospitals, with the CH admitting many more stable patients. This study also suggests that evaluation of ICU use is improved by quantitative measurement of severity of illness.
mesh_terms: D003365:Costs and Cost Analysis; D003953:Diagnosis-Related Groups; D004219:District of Columbia; D006745:Hospital Bed Capacity, 300 to 499; D006746:Hospital Bed Capacity, 500 and over; D006764:Hospitals, Community / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006784:Hospitals, Teaching / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006785:Hospitals, University / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D007362:Intensive Care Units / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008873:Mid-Atlantic Region; D012044:Regression Analysis