Aggressive reimbursement reform has been an imposing directive for care providers of ICU medicine.

Timely knowledge of actual care routines obtained from a large sample of actively practicing physicians should be mandatory when developing any guidelines or practice standards.

A questionnaire was therefore designed by the steering committee of the ACCP Council on Critical Care and sent to its members.

The 1,294 responses were analyzed for demograpbics of the individual practitioner, local aspects of ICU staffing and policies, reimbursement, and a specific practice issue, nutrition.