To provide a prompt and optimal intensive care to critically ill patients visiting our emergency department (ED), we set up and ran a specific type of emergency intensive care unit (EICU) managed by emergency physician (EP) intensivists. We investigated whether this EICU reduced the time interval from ED arrival to ICU transfer (ED-ICU interval) without altering mortality.

This was a retrospective study conducted in a tertiary referral hospital. We collected data from ED patients who were admitted to the EICU (EICU group) and other ICUs including medical, surgical, and cardiopulmonary ICUs (other ICUs group), from August 2014 to July 2017. We compared these two groups with respect to demographic findings, including the Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II (APACHE II) score, ED-ICU interval, ICU mortality, and hospital mortality.

Among the 3440 critically ill patients who visited ED, 1815 (52.8%) were admitted to the EICU during the study period. The ED-ICU interval for the EICU group was significantly shorter than that for the other ICUs group by 27.5% (5.0 ± 4.9 vs. 6.9 ± 5.4 h, p < 0.001). In multivariable analysis, the ICU mortality (odds ratio = 1.062, 95% confidence interval 0.862–1.308, p = 0.571) and hospital mortality (odds ratio = 1.093, 95% confidence interval 0.892–1.338, p = 0.391) of the EICU group were not inferior to those of the other ICUs group.

The EICU run by EP intensivists reduced the time interval from ED arrival to ICU transfer without altering hospital mortality.