Growth of intensive care unit resource use and its estimated cost in Medicare.

Objective: The past 10-15 yrs brought significant changes in the United States healthcare system. Effects on Medicare intensive care unit use and costs are unknown. Intensive care unit costs are estimated using the Russell equation with a ratio of intensive care unit to floor cost per day, or "R value," of 3, which may no longer be valid.

Predicting late anemia in critical illness.

Introduction: Identifying critically ill patients most likely to benefit from pre-emptive therapies will become increasingly important if therapies are to be used safely and cost-effectively. We sought to determine whether a predictive model could be constructed that would serve as a useful decision support tool for the pre-emptive management of intensive care unit (ICU)-related anemia.

Methods: Our cohort consisted of all ICU patients (n = 5,170) admitted to a large tertiary-care academic medical center during the period from 1 July 2000 to 30 June 2001.