Recent research conducted by a team at Ann Arbor-based University of Michigan Medical School debunks conventional wisdom regarding where is best to treat elderly pneumonia patients.
The U-M study found seniors with this common lung infection were more likely to survive if they were treated in an intensive care unit as opposed to a general hospital bed.
All total, the research team collected Medicare data on 1.1 million hospital stays at nearly 3,000 hospitals between 2010 and 2012. Using the data, the researchers noted how many hospitalized patients with pneumonia survived and what their care cost. They focused their study to pneumonia hospital stays where the choice of bed type (ICU versus general hospital bed) was left up to a physician's judgment.
The study revealed:
1. About 13 percent of the patients were placed in an ICU bed only because they lived closest to a hospital that happened to place a high percentage of its pneumonia patients in ICU beds.
2. Of the patient placed in an ICU bed, the researchers found a nearly 6 percent improvement in survival associated with ICU admission for pneumonia.
3. Ultimately, 14.8 percent of the patients who were assigned to an ICU died within 30 days, whereas 20.5 percent of those who were placed in a general bed died in that time frame.
4. Additionally, the cost of caring for these patients was roughly same, regardless of which kind of bed they were in. Medicare paid hospitals an average of about $9,900 for the ICU patients and $11,200 for non-ICU patients.
5. Although hospitals frequently accept less money from Medicare than what patient care actually costs for those with that form of insurance, even these costs were roughly equivalent at $14,100 for ICU patients and $11,300 for non-ICU patients.
"With several recent studies suggesting that too many people are going to the ICU when their risk of death is low, we were surprised that there was a benefit to ICU admission for these patients," said senior author of the study Colin Cooke, MD. "Now, our challenge is to do further work to determine just which patients will get the greatest benefit, and to determine what about ICU care makes a difference."
More articles on pneumonia:
Nearly 30% of hospitalized flu patients have pneumonia
How effective are practice bundles on reducing ventilator-associated pneumonia?
Steroid therapy may benefit pneumonia patients: 3 study findings