Irish National ICU Audit annual report: data from 1st January 2022 to 31st December 2022

This report documents the work undertaken across the national network of Intensive Care Units (ICUs) and High Dependency Units (HDUs) caring for critically ill patients. Audit of this activity is essential for planning and resource allocation and in order to assure the quality of the care provided. Data coverage in participating Units during 2022 is illustrated in Table 1.1 (Chapter 1). There were significant gaps in quarters of data coverage. The most common reasons for these gaps were inadequate staffing of ICU Audit and the backlog caused by the recent COVID-19 pandemic and the infrastructural cyberattack on the Health Service Executive (HSE).  The quarterly data submitted by all Units provide full coverage of the ICU activity for the quarter reported. This level of data coverage supports the comparison between Units based on the assumption that similar trends for a Unit would be observed over the course of each quarter in the year.  Where it is necessary to compare counts of data items across Units in this report, counts for Units that had gaps in data were augmented through extrapolation to provide full-year estimates. Throughout this report, such uplifts are clearly labelled as ‘estimated’, and shown in lighter shading in bar/column charts.</p

Irish National ICU Audit Annual Report 2021

INICUA captured activity in 22 adult public hospitals, which collectively provided 96% of Level 3 ICU care in adult HSE-funded hospitals in 2021. The ICU audit documented 12,151 admissions of 11,420 patients to 26 Units in 22 hospitals. The mean length of stay was 6.6 days. Data in this report provides detailed insights into the complexity and volume of care provided in each Unit, with implications for resource requirements when planning ICU services. A key metric in defining the complexity of care provided is the number of bed days where the Patient is undergoing invasive ventilation. The Report provides data for each Unit on (i) the total number of bed days with invasive ventilation and (ii) bed days with invasive ventilation as a percentage of total bed days.</p