The Central Intensivist Physician Program (CIP) an innovative service provided by the ACCM Adult Critical Care Division throughout Johns Hopkins Hospital. The CIP program staffs an adult intensivist 24 hours / 6.5 days a week as a central resource for our critically-ill adult patients.
The CIP on-duty functions as the primary contact for patient triage and bed management planning for adult surgical patients requiring an advanced level of care in either our SICU, WICU, NCCU, or CVSICU and does ICU outreach while caring for patients in place as they await bed availability in the ICUs. Also serving as the central point of contact for ICU bed requests, the CIP has been an added benefit to our admissions and access team in facilitating and advocating for patients at other hospitals requiring advanced care at JHH. For patients admitted to the SICU or WICU overnight, the CIP is directly responsible for supervising housestaff in providing an attending-level work-up.
Centralized Triage for Multiple Intensive Care Units: The Central Intensivist Physician
Subspecialization of critical care units and overall increasing demand for critical care services has led to inefficiencies in allocation of critical care resources with potential impacts on hospital economics and patient outcomes. Centralized management of critical care resource allocation within an institution may improve use while simultaneously ensuring quality of patient care. The authors’ institution has implemented a Central Intensivist Physician (CIP) program to oversee resource allocation within the adult surgical intensive care units (ICUs). The result has been an improvement in patient flow throughout the surgical ICUs manifested by steady case cancellation rates despite increasing acuity and length of stay. Additionally, triage duties have been shifted from the individual unit physician to the CIP, resulting in improved provider satisfaction from improved continuity of rounds. The authors conclude that the CIP program may improve overall critical care resource use while maintaining unit specialization within a large tertiary care hospital setting. Read more… Contact
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine Central Intensivist Program
Meyer 297-A
1800 Orleans Street
Baltimore, MD 21287
(410) 502-3232
Mark Romig, MD
Assistant Professor
Director, Central Intensivist Program
Associate Director, Biocontainment Unit
mromig1@jhmi.edu
