A Multimodal Sepsis Quality-Improvement Initiative Including 24/7 Screening and a Dedicated Sepsis Response Team-Reduced Readmissions and Mortality.

OBJECTIVES

To evaluate if a hospitalwide sepsis performance improvement initiative improves compliance with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services-mandated sepsis bundle interventions and patient outcomes.

STUDY DESIGN

Retrospective analysis comparing 6 months before and 14 months after intervention.

SETTING

Tertiary teaching hospital in Washington, DC.

SUBJECTS

Patients admitted with a diagnosis of sepsis to a tertiary hospital.

INTERVENTIONS

Implementation of a multimodal quality-improvement initiative.

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS

A total of 4,102 patients were diagnosed with sepsis, severe sepsis, or septic shock during the study period, 861 patients (21%) were diagnosed during a 6-month preintervention period, and 3,241 (79%) were diagnosed in a 13-month postintervention period. Adjusted for patient case-mix, the prevalence of simple sepsis increased by 12%, but it decreased for severe sepsis and septic shock by 5.3% and 6.9%, respectively. Compliance with all sepsis bundle interventions increased by 31.1 percentage points ( < 0.01). All-cause hospital readmission and readmission due to infection were both reduced by 1.6% and 1.7 percentage points ( < 0.05). Death from any sepsis diagnosis was reduced 4.5% ( < 0.01). Death from severe sepsis and septic shock both was reduced by 5% ( < 0.01) and 6.5% ( < 0.01), respectively.

CONCLUSIONS

After the implementation of multimodal sepsis performance initiatives, we observed a higher prevalence of sepsis secondary to screening but a lower prevalence of severe sepsis and septic shock, an improvement in compliance with the sepsis bundle interventions bundle, as well as reduction in hospital readmission and all- cause mortality rate.