Hannah Wunsch is a critical-care physician at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and a professor at the University of Toronto. She is the author ofIntensive care units are the last repository of hope in hospitals. Working with the most cutting-edge medical technology, teams of individuals skilled in critical-care medicine save lives in an ICU by combining high-tech support with nursing and medical expertise.
Given these clear benefits of modern ICUs, I often get asked: If we didn’t have enough beds in these units during the height of thepandemic, shouldn’t we build more in anticipation of the next wave of COVID, or a different onslaught? The availability of ICU beds also does not necessarily change the overall health of a population. While health care spending has a strong relationship to many markers of overall health in a population, this is not always the case. Despite having more ICU beds per capita than most other countries, the United States also has one of the worst maternal mortality rates of developed countries, a lower life expectancy, and one of the worst death rates from COVID.