ZIMM-LMU: Interdisciplinary pooling of intensive care expertise

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Every year, around two million people in Germany require intensive monitoring and treatment due to life-threatening illnesses or injuries. This requires interdisciplinary and multi-professional care, which can only be provided by a highly specialized team of intensive care physicians and nurses. This makes it all the more important that intensive care medical and nursing expertise can be used across disciplines and locations as much as possible—for example, to be able to help critically ill patients in smaller hospitals quickly and easily. In October 2023, the Joint Federal Committee (G-BA) therefore decided to establish centers for intensive care medicine: these are hospitals that will in future perform special tasks in addition to patient care as centers of expertise and coordination for intensive care medicine.

The Center for Intensive Care Medicine Munich (ZIMMLMU) was founded as one of the first centers for intensive care medicine in Germany after being assigned the relevant center tasks by the Bavarian Ministry of Science and the Arts in February 2024. "The aim of ZIMMLMU is to utilize the extensive interdisciplinary and interprofessional intensive care expertise available at LMU Hospital to optimize the treatment of critically ill patients in hospitals at all levels of care, thereby creating the conditions for the highest standard of treatment across the board," says Prof. Dr. Bernhard Zwißler, head of ZIMMLMU.

Ten participating disciplines

Ten specialist disciplines are involved in the ZIMM-LMU, which operates a total of 120 intensive care beds in ten adult intensive care units. The patients treated there are cared for around the clock by more than 350 healthcare professionals and nurses. "Through interdisciplinary collaboration, we also want to further develop quality management as well as continuing education, teaching, and clinical research in the field of intensive care medicine—and this should also benefit the clinics participating in the network," explains PD Dr. Ines Schroeder, coordinator of ZIMM-LMU.

Tele-intensive care connection

Many other projects are already in development. These range, for example, from the development of common standards for patient care, quality circles, and the establishment of a peer review process to a series of intensive care training courses and the strengthening of sustainability aspects through a Green Team. In addition to internal interdisciplinary and interprofessional cooperation, a special focus is placed on external networking: The tele-intensive care connection between Schön Klinik Bad Aibling and Klinikum Garmisch-Partenkirchen is already established. But even beyond telemedicine, uncomplicated cooperation between the center and the clinics that will be connected to the network in the future is planned. This means that medical expertise and the transfer of patients requiring intensive care can be requested at any time via a central contact point. In addition, the affiliated network clinics have access to the wide range of training courses offered by ZIMMLMU and, in the future, quality assurance measures (e.g., peer review, recommendations on therapy standards).

Contact:
PD Dr. Ines Schroeder
Centre for Intensive Care Medicine Munich, LMU Medical Centre Munich
Tel: 089 4400 44111
ZIMM@med.uni-muenchen.de