Intensivists Can Reduce Hospital Mortality

A study has shown that patients in an intensive care unit (ICU) whose care is managed by intensivists, doctors specially trained in critical care medicine, have a 30% reduction in mortality and a shorter hospital stay than patients whose care is managed by other doctors. The study was published in the November 6, 2002, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Previous studies estimated only a 10% reduction in mortality through the use of intensivists. The current study increases the number of potential lives that could be saved each year in the United States alone from 54,000 to 162,000. For the study, researchers searched medical literature for studies comparing physician management in the intensive care setting. They reviewed 2,590 abstracts and 26 observational studies, comparing the different staffing strategies for ICUs. Patients at hospitals that had a higher concentration of critical care specialists had reduced ICU and hospital death rates and lengths of stay.
"This should be a huge focus for improving the quality of care in this country, especially since only 10% of hospitals employ these specialists,” said Peter J. Pronovost, M.D., Ph.D., lead author of the study and associate professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine at Johns Hopkins Medical School (Baltimore, MD., USA).



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