Abstract
Over the past 25 years, various outcome-based quality indicators other than mortality have been proposed as performance or quality indicators for monitoring outcomes from adult, general critical care units in the UK. A descriptive trend analysis of the several potential outcome-based quality indicators from Case Mix Programme data for the five-year period 2003 to 2007 is reported. Delayed discharge has shown a large increase over time while out-of-hours discharges have shown a modest increase over time. Premature discharge, inter-hospital critical care unit-to-unit transfers, both overall and for a non-clinical reason, early readmissions and post-unit mortality have all decreased slightly. Early analysis indicates that almost 5,000 bed-days were ‘lost’ for approximately 20,000 admissions due to delayed discharge. The percentage of discharges that occur out-of-hours has continued to increase steadily over the past five years and now stands at around 10%. It is hoped that these data might contribute to discussions on agreeing the most appropriate outcome-based quality indicators to use in adult, general critical care.