Assessing the Influence of Intensive Care Unit Organizational Factors on Outcomes in Canada: Is There Residual Confounding?

Peter M Dodek; Monica Norena; Hubert Wong; Sean Keenan; Claudio Martin

doi:10.1177/0885066614521973

Assessing the Influence of Intensive Care Unit Organizational Factors on Outcomes in Canada: Is There Residual Confounding?

J Intensive Care Med. 2015 Oct;30(7):413-9. doi: 10.1177/0885066614521973. Epub 2014 Feb 7.

Authors

Peter M Dodek¹, Monica Norena², Hubert Wong³, Sean Keenan⁴, Claudio Martin⁵

Affiliations

¹ Division of Critical Care Medicine, Providence Health Care and University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada Center for Health Evaluation and Outcome Sciences, Providence Health Care and University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada peter.dodek@ubc.ca.
² Center for Health Evaluation and Outcome Sciences, Providence Health Care and University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
³ Center for Health Evaluation and Outcome Sciences, Providence Health Care and University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
⁴ Division of Critical Care Medicine, Providence Health Care and University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada Center for Health Evaluation and Outcome Sciences, Providence Health Care and University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
⁵ Department of Medicine, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada.

PMID: 24509494
DOI: 10.1177/0885066614521973

Abstract

Objective: To illustrate the complexities of assessing the influence of individual organizational factors on outcomes for intensive care unit (ICU) patients in Canada.

Methods: In this cross-sectional study, we used retrospectively collected data from all patients admitted to all ICUs in British Columbia between April 01, 1994, and March 31, 1999, or to 20 ICUs in Ontario during 2002. We used responses to a survey about organizational factors for all ICUs in British Columbia and Ontario that was done in 2001. Clustered data regression models were used to assess the influence of organizational factors on outcomes after adjustment for patient-level confounders.

Results: Despite adjustment for age, sex, comorbidity score of patients, and limitation of the data sets to minimize confounding, we found variable relationships between ICU outcomes (hospital mortality, ICU length of stay, and hospital length of stay) and any of "closed" administrative model, daily rounds, presence of an ICU medical director, medical director trained in critical care medicine, presence of a nurse leader in the ICU, nurse-patient ratio, and presence of an ICU pharmacist. Closed administrative model was associated with lower hospital mortality (odds ratio [95% confidence interval]: 0.75 [0.66-0.85]), shorter length of ICU stay (rate ratio [95% confidence interval]: 0.76 [0.62-0.92]), and shorter length of hospital stay (rate ratio [5% confidence interval]: 0.78 [0.72-0.84]) in nontertiary ICUs but many other "advantageous" factors were associated with higher mortality.

Conclusions: The lack of a consistent relationship between organizational factors and ICU outcomes, and relationships that show increased mortality associated with some advantageous factors, suggests that there is residual confounding in these relationships. Models that adjust for only conventional patient-level confounders are unlikely to provide valid estimates of the influence of organizational factors.

Keywords: confounding; hospital mortality; intensive care; length of stay; organizational factors.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Canada
Confounding Factors, Epidemiologic
Cross-Sectional Studies
Hospital Mortality
Humans
Intensive Care Units / organization & administration*
Intensive Care Units / standards*
Length of Stay
Outcome and Process Assessment, Health Care*
Retrospective Studies

Grants and funding

62778/Canadian Institutes of Health Research/Canada