Perioperative medicine & outcomes
Postoperative Overtriage to an Intensive Care Unit Is Associated With Low Value of Care
Authors' conclusion
Low-acuity postoperative patients who were overtriaged to ICUs had increased total costs, no improvements in outcomes, and received low-value care.
Study context
- Population
- Low-acuity postoperative surgical patients
- Participants
- 8,592 postoperative intensive care unit (ICU) admissions
- Exposure
- Overtriage vs Controls
- Overtriagen = 423
- Controlsn = 2,155reference
- Outcome
- Value of care (inverse observed-to-expected mortality ratio divided by total costs)
Methodological detailsrisk-matched (nearest neighbors algorithm), machine learning-based acuity assessment
- Risk-matched (nearest neighbors algorithm)
- Machine learning-based acuity assessment
Main finding
As reported in the abstract
Value of care
Overtriage
2.9
range 2.0–4.0
Controls
24.2
range 14.1–34.5
P < 0.001
Observational data: associations, not effects.
Further findings
| Outcome | Overtriage | Controls | P value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total costs for admission | $16.4K | $15.9K | P = 0.03 |
Acuity assessment performance for triage classification
- AUC
- 0.92
Overtriage incidence among postoperative ICU admissions
- Overtriaged
- 423 (4.9%)
Safety
- Overtriaged admissions did not have a lower incidence of any measured complications vs controls
Original publication
Postoperative Overtriage to an Intensive Care Unit Is Associated With Low Value of Care. Ann Surg. Published 6 July 2022. doi:10.
Composed by AI from the published abstract and checked against it. How Briefs are made →