Irish National ICU Audit Annual Report on 2022 data: Improving Patient Care With National Clinical Audits

Irish National ICU Audit Annual Report on 2022 data

This is the sixth national report from the Irish National ICU Audit. It includes activity from 22 adult public hospitals, which collectively provided 96% of Level 3 ICU care in adult HSE-funded hospitals in 2022. The ICU audit documented 11,008 admissions of 10,423 patients to 26 Units in 22 hospitals.

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Key Findings

This report echoes the findings of previous years that Irish ICUs continue to be very busy with high levels of bed occupancy and illness severity. There has been an increase in the number of individual Units with measures of the quality of care (‘Quality Indicators’), outside the expected range. This suggests a system under pressure due to a shortage of ICU beds, despite the expansion in numbers of ICU beds which has occurred. Despite these pressures, most measures of quality of care, including mortality, remained within the expected range.

Key Recommendations

NOCA published the Irish National ICU Audit Annual Report on 2021 data in November 2023, which included five recommendations for implementation by the HSE and NOCA. NOCA continue to advocate for these recommendations and an update will be provided in the report on 2023 data.