Associations of ICU Capacity Strain with Disposition and Outcomes of Patients with Sepsis Presenting to the Emergency Department

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov August 19, 2018

The odds that patients in the ED with sepsis who do not require life support therapies will be admitted to the ICU are reduced when those ICUs experience high occupancy, but not high levels of other previously explored measures of capacity strain. Patients with sepsis admitted to the wards during times of high ICU occupancy had increased odds of hospital mortality. Among 77,142 hospital admissions from the ED, 3,067 patients met the study’s eligibility criteria. The ICU capacity strain metrics varied among and within study hospitals over time. We performed a retrospective cohort study of patients with sepsis admitted from the ED to a medical ward or ICU at three hospitals within the University of Pennsylvania Health System from 2012 to 2015.