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In recent years, high hospital censuses and lack of available floor beds have triggered more-common use of direct discharge home (DDH) from intensive care units (ICUs; >10% of ICU admissions now are DDH). A small 2018 study showed that select patients could be discharged safely from the ICU (NEJM JW Gen Med Oct 1 2018 and JAMA Intern Med 2018; 178:1390). Now, in a meta-analysis of six cohort studies, researchers propensity-matched 50,000 patients to compare safety outcomes among patients who were discharged directly from ICUs and those who were transferred to non-ICU beds.
The most common admission diagnoses for DDH patients included diabetes complications (e.g., ketoacidosis) in about one third of DDH patients, overdose in about one third, …