Out-of-hours discharge from critical care: does it matter?

Out of hours care.

I ncreasingly the future organisation of paediatrics at secondary level, the place of first referral, depends greatly on the organisation and quality of care at primary level. The ability of paediatricians to influence primary child health care is limited at present to advocacy and training, but recently some have been expressing the view that we in the UK should follow US and European practice...

Out-of-hours discharge from intensive care, in-hospital mortality and intensive care readmission rates: a systematic review protocol

BACKGROUND Most patients are discharged from an intensive care unit with an expectation that they will survive their hospital stay, yet these patients have high subsequent in-hospital mortality. Patients are frequently discharged from an intensive care unit to a lower level of hospital care in the evenings and at night (out-of-hours). By affecting the care that patients receive, out-of-hours di...

The relationship between out of hours discharge and hospital outcome

Introduction Evidence suggests night-time discharges from the intensive care unit (ICU) are associated with poorer outcomes, and patients are at increased risk of clinical deterioration [1,2]. Out-of-hours (OOH) discharges are used as a quality indicator for this reason. The Faculty for Intensive Care Medicine (FICM) and the Scottish Intensive Care Society (SICS) currently use different time pe...

IT Doesn’t Matter, Does It

Ping Wang: In a recent conversation, the CIO of an automobile company told me that his company is cutting IT spending “across the board.” However, the marketing department really needs to buy a CRM package to obtain the online customer interfacing capability. When his IT department proposed this purchase to the board, it was rejected because the purchase was considered unnecessary IT spending. ...

Providing out of hours urgent care.