title: Benchmarking outcome in ICU.
abstract: There are as yet few well developed systems for comparing the quality of care in Irish hospitals with other hospitals either nationally or internationally. The best known are the perinatal mortality rates of the Dublin maternity hospitals. Other examples include mortality rates after cardiac surgery and survival rates after cancer surgery. We describe a comparison of outcomes in an Irish ICU with internationally validated mortality rates for a given severity of illness. The method of stratifying for severity of illness is by use of the APACHE II scoring system. In 2003 the standardised mortality ratio for Beaumont Hospital ICU was 0.87 with a mean APACHE II admission score of 17.5 which compares favourably with similar data produced from UK units.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care, Beaumont Hospital, Dublin 9. alantlane@yahoo.co.uk
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lane
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Baggot
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Power
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Dwyer
mesh_terms: D018806:APACHE; D019985:Benchmarking / Q000379:methods*; D017052:Hospital Mortality; D006801:Humans; D007362:Intensive Care Units / Q000592:standards*; D007494:Ireland / Q000453:epidemiology; D008485:Medical Audit; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*