Hospital mortality prediction for intermediate care patients: Assessing the generalizability of the Intermediate Care Unit Severity Score (IMCUSS)

PURPOSE: The Intermediate Care Unit Severity Score (IMCUSS) is an easy to calculate predictor of in-hospital death, and the only such tool developed for patients in the intermediate care setting. We sought to examine its external validity. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Using data from patients admitted to the intermediate care unit (IMCU) of an urban academic medical center from July to December of 2012, model discrimination and calibration for predicting in-hospital death were assessed using the area under the receiver operating characteristic (AUROC) and the Hosmer-Lemeshow goodness-of-fit chi-squared (HL GOF X(2)) test, respectively. The standardized mortality ratio (SMR) with 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) was also calculated. RESULTS: The cohort included data from 628 unique admissions to the IMCU. Overall hospital mortality was 8.3%. The median IMCUSS was 10 (Interquartile Range: 0–16), with 229 (36%) patients having a score of zero. The AUROC for the IMCUSS was 0.72 (95% CI: 0.64–0.78), the HL GOF X(2) = 30.7 (P < 0.001), and the SMR was 1.22 (95% CI: 0.91–1.60). CONCLUSIONS: The IMCUSS exhibited acceptable discrimination, poor calibration, and underestimated mortality. Other centers should assess the performance of the IMCUSS before adopting its use.