Relationship between intensive care surge capacity and hospital factors: an extensive experience.
Matteo NocciGianluca VillaLuca RagazzoniLorenzo TofaniStefano RomagnoliGabriele BaldiniPietro BertiniIves HubloueSabino ScollettaMaria Teresa MechiFrancesco Della CortePublished in: Internal and emergency medicine (2023)
As a prolonged surge scenario, the COVID-19 pandemic has offered an unparalleled opportunity to improve hospital surge capacity (SC) understanding and the ability to manage it. In this study, the authors report the experience of a large hospital network and evaluate potential relationships between Intensive Care Units SC (ICU-SC) and some hospital-related variables: bed occupancy, emergency department admissions, ward admission from ED, and elective surgery procedures. Pearson's partial correlation coefficient (r) has been used to define the relationship between SC and the daily values of the above variables, collected through a dedicated digital platform that also ensured a regular quality check of the data. The observation has concerned several levels of analysis, namely two different types of SC calculation (SC base-SCb and SC actual-SCa), hospital category level and multi-hospital level, and two consecutive pandemic waves. Among the 16 hospitals observed, the correlation was shown to be moderate-positive with non-ICU bed occupancy (r/ = 0.62, r/ = 0.54), strong/moderate with ICU bed occupancy (r/ = 0.72, r/ = 0.54), and moderate with ward admissions from ED (r/ = 0.50, r/ = 0.51) On the contrary, the correlation proved to be moderate-negative with ED admissions (r/ = - 0.69, r/ = - 0.62) and low with the number of elective surgery procedures (r/ = - 0.10, r/ = - 0.16). This study identified a positive correlation between SC and three variables monitored: ICU bed occupancy, non-ICU bed occupancy, and ward admissions from ED. On the contrary, the correlation was negative for ED admission and the number of elective surgery procedures. The results have been confirmed across all levels of analysis adopted.
Keyphrases
- emergency department
- intensive care unit
- healthcare
- adverse drug
- mechanical ventilation
- minimally invasive
- acute care
- high intensity
- coronary artery bypass
- patients undergoing
- sars cov
- physical activity
- computed tomography
- percutaneous coronary intervention
- climate change
- acute coronary syndrome
- acute respiratory distress syndrome
- extracorporeal membrane oxygenation