Benjamin Bassin, M.D., an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Michigan Medicine and the EC3's director of clinical operations, explains that the findings of the study have an important impact on clinical care.

"Our study found that for every 333 patients that presented to our emergency room, we were able to save one life by utilizing our new clinical approach," says Bassin, a co-author on the study.


"At Michigan Medicine, we average about 250 emergency department visits each day, so an additional life was saved approximately every 36 hours because of this unit."

Future care

The EC3's medical team hopes this study proves the benefits of having a dedicated, emergency medicine department-based intensive care unit.

"We hope this study and the level of care we are able to provide in our EC3 will encourage other health systems to consider implementing an emergency medicine department-based intensive care unit in their own hospital," says Renee Havey, M.S., R.N., clinical nurse specialist of the EC3 and a co-author on the study.

Nathan Haas, M.D., an attending physician in the EC3 and a co-author on the study, agrees, "And if they can't build their own unit at this time, we hope this study offers them strategies they could tailor and use in their own current emergency department setting."

The EC3 team notes that the creation and implementation of the EC3 would not be possible without one main ingredient: teamwork.

"Through the entirety of the design process to its implementation, a large multidisciplinary team consisting of every job category within the emergency department helped us create this unique care delivery model that will impact our patients for years to come," Neumar says.

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