Seminars in respiratory and critical care medicine
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Patients, clinicians and policy makers are increasingly interested in measuring and improving the quality of health care at the end of life. The intensive care unit (ICU) is characterized by high mortality and frequent use of life-sustaining treatments, making critical care a natural target for these efforts. Indeed, multiple local and regional quality improvement efforts now specifically target the dying experience for ICU patients, patients at risk for ICU admission, and their families. ⋯ Although these initiatives hold great promise, they also face inherent challenges-it is difficult to measure the quality of end-of-life care, we lack practical targets for affecting quality, and uncertain political climates can often preclude serious discussions about end-of-life care. Moreover, these programs may lead to unintended consequences, potentially negatively impacting the very care they seek to improve. Future innovations surrounding how we measure the quality of end-of-life care and paradigm shifts in the way we think about ICU quality may help us to fully realize the goal of improving the dying process for ICU patients.
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Rationing occurs whenever the demand for a good or service exceeds its supply. Therefore rationing is an inevitable occurrence in medicine and in critical care where the potential demand for effective medical care will exceed supply. Although there are many strategies to allocate medical resources one that is often considered is based on cost-effectiveness. ⋯ The prospect of a pandemic influenza-like infection has stimulated a lot of interest in hypothetical rationing strategies for the intensive care unit, none of which has been tested in actual pandemic scenarios. Given the burden of critical illness and the wide variation in resources a global approach to rationing is untenable. The article concludes with a vision of the future of allocation in critical care.
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Semin Respir Crit Care Med · Aug 2012
System-level quality improvement initiatives: lessons from Keystone and other large-scale projects.
Health care systems around the world are seeking system-level interventions to improve the quality and safety of care because of increasing awareness that many patients do not receive recommended therapies or suffer preventable complications. This has also been motivated by a drive to deliver health care more cost-effectively, and to be more accountable to payers and other stakeholders. ⋯ This article discusses factors that contributed to the success of the Keystone Project and also considers its economic implications. There are also recommendations for the design and evaluation of future system-level quality improvement programs.