An Intensive Care Unit (ICU) or Critical Care Unit (CCU) is a specialised facility in a hospital that provides intensive care medicine. The first application of this idea in the US was pioneered by Dr. William Mosenthal, a surgeon at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.
Many hospitals also have designated intensive care areas for certain specialities of medicine, as dictated by the needs and available resources of each hospital. The naming is not rigidly standardized.