The starting point of ELOISE is the significant number of Intensive Care Unit (ICU) survivors who die after the transfer to ward. This mortality rate nullifies the sophisticated diagnostics and the life-support therapies adopted in the ICU.

The inadequate care available at the destination ward has been suggested as one of the reasons to explain the bad outcome of some ICU survivors, but most hospitals do not have enough ICU beds to prolong the ICU stay until the patient has fully recovered. Therefore, Inter Mediate Care Units (IMCU) with levels of nursing staff and costs lower than ICU but higher than wards have been proposed to facilitate discharges of ICU patients. Unfortunately the literature does provide evidence of efficacy of IMCU.

The primary aim of the study is to assess whether the patients admitted to ICUs with availability of IMCU have lower hospital mortality than those admitted to the ICU without availability of IMCU.

Secondary aims are as follows:

1. To compare Lengths Of ICU and Hospital Stay (LOIS and LOHS, respectively) of patients admitted to ICUs with or without availability of IMCU.
2. To assess the influence of IMCU on the rate of ICU readmissions.
3. To compare the hospital survival of patients discharged to IMCU and general ward (in hospital with or without availability of IMCU) adjusted for severity of illness and nursing workload at ICU discharge. This last aim will require a larger sample size (more than 10,000), but we hope to collect such a sample.

Despite the high cost of Intensive Care Unit (ICU), a significant number of patients surviving intensive care die subsequently in hospital after the transfer to ward. Mortality rates after discharge from ICU have been reported to range from 6.1 to 27%

In 2000, it was reported that premature discharge from ICU was more likely to occur at night and was associated with higher death rates. Suggested factors that might account for a worse outcome for night discharges were poorer quantity and quality of care available at night both during transfer and at the destination. The implication of this study for the health system was that many hospitals did not have enough ICU beds. To facilitate earlier ICU discharges of ICU patients who are thought to need more care than those which can be provided on wards, InterMediate Care Units (IMCU) with level of nursing staff (and costs) lower than ICU were proposed more than a decade ago.

Despite the relevance of the topic, the literature on the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of IMCU available at present shows variable results. And the potential benefits of IMCUs remain uncertain.

The most striking are probably the following questions:

• Does IMCU decrease the hospital mortality rate of ICU patients?
• Does IMCU allow earlier ICU discharge and hence improve patients flux through the ICU and reduce ICU cost?
• Does IMCU permit a reduction of ICU readmissions? We propose to address these issues in a large multinational, multicentre study.

Inclusion Criteria:

• admission to one of the Study Unit
• any organ support allowed
• age of at least 16 years

Exclusion Criteria:

• age lower than 16 years
• patients admitted as donor for transplant
• patients admitted with limitation of care stated before admission

All adult patients consecutively admitted to the Study Units during one month (from 7th November to 4th December 2010)

337 readmissions, 83 admissions with inconsistencies in dates and 147 patients with unknown vital status at hospital discharge (82 still in hospital at 90 days and 65 with missing vital status) were excluded from the analysis.

Adverse events were not collected.