SICSAG

Welcome to the SICSAG website

Critical Care underpins emergency and elective work in all acute hospitals.  Annually, more than 35,000 of the most severely ill or injured patients require specialist care and treatment in Scottish Critical Care Units.  

SICSAG’s aim is to improve the quality of care delivered to these patients by monitoring and comparing activities and outcomes across Scottish Critical Care. We intend to drive standards and quality of care upward by providing information that clinical staff can use in quality improvement programmes,  service planning and research.

Critical Care faces challenges in the coming years with reduced public spending and projected increased demands on services by an ageing population. The information and data from this national database remains vital to meet the needs of the Scottish population.

What’s New in SICSAG?

Central Line Insertion Bundle: New update: April 2012

 

 

 

 

Recalibration of APACHE II

Scottish Intensive Care Units use APACHE II methodology (Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation) to adjust for varying case-mix of patients admitted to each unit, prior to comparing unit outcomes.
   
Currently we use the original diagnosis co-efficients described by Knaus et al (1985). We are currently creating new co-efficients based on Scottish data over the last 3-5 years and will be doing extensive testing of these new co-efficients over the next year before publishing the results in 2013. Please contact NSS.sicsag@nhs.net if you would like more information.

APACHE II paper