1448Intensive care utilisation in New Zealand 2010 to 2020

Abstract

BackgroundMany countries are assessing their capacity of intensive care (IC) after COVID-19 outbreak due to massively increase in the utilisation. This work analysed the utilisation of IC in New Zealand (NZ) between 2010 and 2020, as a base to predict and plan the health service in the future.MethodsInpatient events from NZ national data collection and datasets from the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society were matched to generate a relatively comprehensive IC dataset for patients cared in NZ.ResultsOver the period, around 182,000 IC inpatient events with associated 12.1 million IC hours were identified. For NZ patients, age-standardised rate was 328 events or 905 IC bed days per 100,000 population. The age-standardised rates were significantly higher in Maori and Pacific, and significantly lower in Asian population. The absolute IC events and IC hours significantly increased over the period, with a slope of 390 IC events or 29,000 IC hours per year. Significant increase in IC hours over the period were found in the diagnostic categories of injuries, cardiovascular diseases, neurological conditions and lower respiratory infections; or patients cared by health specialties of cardiothoracic surgery, general surgery, orthopaedic surgery and respiratory medicine.ConclusionsThe IC utilisation are different in population subgroups. Trends and volumes of IC utilisation in different clinical diagnoses and health specialties were quantified.Key messagesWith population projection, these results provide evidence to predict IC capacity demand and to design IC services (e.g. health specialties, IC beds and investment needed) in the future.