Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
-
Critical care is an expensive and limited resource, and short-stay critical care admissions may be treated in alternate, less costly settings. This study objective was to determine the proportion of critical care admissions with a short critical care length of stay (LOS) and identify the clinical characteristics and diagnoses associated with high and low rates of short-stay critical care admissions. ⋯ Over one-third of critical care admissions were short stay. Alternate strategies to manage these patients, including ED-based critical care units or other venues of inpatient care, may be more cost-efficient for selected patients.