[2603.25397] A Causal Framework for Evaluating ICU Discharge Strategies

Statistics > Methodology arXiv:2603.25397 (stat) [Submitted on 26 Mar 2026] Title:A Causal Framework for Evaluating ICU Discharge Strategies Authors:Sagar Nagaraj Simha, Juliette Ortholand, Dave Dongelmans, Jessica D. Workum, Olivier W.M. Thijssens, Ameen Abu-Hanna, Giovanni Cinà View a PDF of the paper titled A Causal Framework for Evaluating ICU Discharge Strategies, by Sagar Nagaraj Simha and 6 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:In this applied paper, we address the difficult open problem of when to discharge patients from the Intensive Care Unit. This can be conceived as an optimal stopping scenario with three added challenges: 1) the evaluation of a stopping strategy from observational data is itself a complex causal inference problem, 2) the composite objective is to minimize the length of intervention and maximize the outcome, but the two cannot be collapsed to a single dimension, and 3) the recording of variables stops when the intervention is discontinued. Our contributions are two-fold. First, we generalize the implementation of the g-formula Python package, providing a framework to evaluate stopping strategies for problems with the aforementioned structure, including positivity and coverage checks. Second, with a fully open-source pipeline, we apply this approach to MIMIC-IV, a public ICU dataset, demonstrating the potential for strategies that improve upon current care. Comments: Subjects: Methodology (stat.ME); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI);...