28 Joint Cognitive Systems
The incentives to d ischarge pat ients from the ICU in order to make room for
new patients are not entirely aligned with the interests of the indiv idual surgical
service. Officially, any bed that is emptied by dis charging the current occupant
from the ICU is returned to the bed pool. This means that the bed is ava ilable to the
bedmeister for assignment to any surgical pa tient, not only to patients from th e
service that made it available. This reduces the incentive to a surgical service to
discharge their patients from the ICU; the resources may simply be consum ed by
some other surgical s ervice. When a bedcrunch looms, however, the bedmeis ter can
reduce the disincentive by agreeing to give the bed back to the dischar ...