Joshua Medow, MD, MS; Brandon Rocque, MD, MS; Daniella Micic, MD— Intensive care units (ICUs) provide acute life-sustaining care for the sickest patients in the hospital and, as such, consume a significant amount of health-care resources. Demand for ICU beds also is growing as the population ages and as technology allows physicians to prolong life for the chronically critically ill (10, 15, 38). For these reasons, ICUs often are targets for quality-improvement projects geared toward identifying ways to decrease resource use (4, 34). Neurosurgical patients often are at the extreme end of resource use, requiring procedures, expensive medications and life-supporting devices. For this reason, neuroscience ICUs and their practices should be studied in depth to identify ways that quality care can be provided at reduced costs.
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