The Costs of Nonbeneficial Treatment in the Intensive Care Setting
- Topics:
- Healthcare Services
- Tags:
- Business Ethics,
- Consultation,
- Ethics,
- Leadership,
- Management,
- Treatment
- Source:
- Project HOPE
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Overview: Ethics consultations have been shown to reduce the use of "nonbeneficial treatments," defined as life-sustaining treatments delivered to patients who ultimately did not survive to hospital discharge, when treatment conflicts occurred in the adult intensive care unit. The paper estimates the costs of nonbeneficial treatment using the results from a randomized trial of ethics consultations. It finds that ethics consultations were associated with reductions in hospital days and treatment costs among patients who did not survive to hospital discharge. It concludes that consultations resolved conflicts that would have inappropriately prolonged nonbeneficial or unwanted treatments in the ICU instead of focusing on more appropriate comfort care.
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Format: PDF | Size: 124KB | Date: Aug 2005 | Pages: 11
