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

As one of the first centers for intensive care medicine in Germany, the Center for Intensive Care Medicine Munich (^ZIMMLMU) was founded after the Bavarian Ministry of Science and Art assigned the corresponding center tasks in February 2024. "The aim of the ^ZIMMLMU is to use the extensive interdisciplinary and interprofessional expertise in intensive care medicine at LMU Hospital to optimize the treatment of critically ill patients in hospitals at all levels of care and thus create the conditions for treatment at the highest level in the area," says Prof. Dr. Bernhard Zwißler, Head of the ^ZIMMLMU.

Ten specialist disciplines are involved in the ^ZIMMLMU, operating 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 and nursing staff. "Through interdisciplinary cooperation, we also want to further develop quality management as well as further training, 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 the ^ZIMMLMU.

Many other projects are already in development. These range, for example, from the development of joint standards for patient care, quality circles and the establishment of a peer review process to a series of further training courses in intensive care medicine and the strengthening of sustainability aspects through a Green Team. In addition to internal interdisciplinary and interprofessional cooperation, a particular focus is placed on external networking: The teleintensive care connection to the Schön Klinik Bad Aibling and the Klinikum Garmisch-Partenkirchen are already established. But even beyond telemedicine, uncomplicated cooperation between the center and the clinics connected to the network in the future is planned. For example, 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 will have access to the ^ZIMMLMU 's wide range of training opportunities and, in the future, quality assurance measures (e.g. peer review, recommendations on treatment standards).