Possibilities for cost containment in intensive care

An intensive care unit (ICU) is valuable but consumes a disproportionately high amount of health‐care resources. Accordingly, cost containment has been deemed a mandatory task. A review of the literature from many countries was completed to determine the strategies for reducing the cost of care in t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nursing & health sciences 2006-12, Vol.8 (4), p.237-240
Main Authors: Thungjaroenkul, Petsunee, Kunaviktikul, Wipada
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
containment
cost
Cost Control
cost saving
Cost Savings
Critical Care - economics
Decision Making, Organizational
Hospital Costs - statistics & numerical data
Humans
intensive care
intensive care unit
Intensive Care Units - economics
Medicine - organization & administration
Nursing
Organizational Policy
Patient Care Team - organization & administration
Program Development
Progressive Patient Care - organization & administration
Reminder Systems
Remote Consultation - organization & administration
resource utilization
Specialization
Subacute Care - organization & administration
Total Quality Management - organization & administration
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Summary:An intensive care unit (ICU) is valuable but consumes a disproportionately high amount of health‐care resources. Accordingly, cost containment has been deemed a mandatory task. A review of the literature from many countries was completed to determine the strategies for reducing the cost of care in the ICU. The results of this review show that cost reduction can be achieved by using a variety of the following strategies: (i) instituting a closed ICU, where all the patient care is directed by intensivists or full‐time critical care trained physicians; (ii) the utilization of interdisciplinary approaches to the care of patients in the ICU; (iii) developing and implementing a program of television‐guided remote intensivists; (iv) the use of an alerting and reminding system; and (v) increasing the number of intermediate care beds for patients who require only monitoring and intensive nursing. The conclusion reached is that many of these strategies provide evidence for hospital manager decisions regarding cost containment strategies for the delivery of health care in the ICU.
ISSN:1441-0745
1442-2018
DOI:10.1111/j.1442-2018.2006.00289.x