Medical care
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Factors related to hospital resource use by intensive care unit (ICU) patients, including severity of illness at admission and intensity of therapy during the first 24 ICU hours were explored in this study. Analysis was based on 2,749 patients admitted to the general medical-surgical ICU at Baystate Medical Center, Springfield, Massachusetts, between February 1, 1983 and January 10, 1985. Resource use was indexed by hospital length of stay (LOS) adjusted for differences between ICU and other hospital days. ⋯ Variability in resource use was analyzed using four diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) accounting for large numbers of ICU patients. The relationship between severity of illness and resource was nonlinear: as severity increased from low levels, resource use increased at a decreasing rate, reached a plateau, and eventually declined. Within each DRG, MPM0 explained a statistically significant percentage of the variability in resource use.