Association Between Medicare's Sepsis Reporting Policy (SEP-1) and the Documentation of a Sepsis Diagnosis in the Clinical Record.

STUDY DESIGN

Interrupted time series analysis of a retrospective, electronic health record cohort.

OBJECTIVE

To determine the association between the implementation of Medicare's sepsis reporting measure (SEP-1) and sepsis diagnosis rates as assessed in clinical documentation.

BACKGROUND

The role of health policy in the effort to improve sepsis diagnosis remains unclear.

PATIENTS AND METHODS

Adult patients hospitalized with suspected infection and organ dysfunction within 6 hours of presentation to the emergency department, admitted to one of 11 hospitals in a multi-hospital health system from January 2013 to December 2017. Clinician-diagnosed sepsis, as reflected by the inclusion of the terms "sepsis" or "septic" in the text of clinical notes in the first two calendar days following presentation.

RESULTS

Among 44,074 adult patients with sepsis admitted to 11 hospitals over 5 years, the proportion with sepsis documentation was 32.2% just before the implementation of SEP-1 in the third quarter of 2015 and increased to 37.3% by the fourth quarter of 2017. Of the 9 post-SEP-1 quarters, 8 had odds ratios for a sepsis diagnosis >1 (overall range: 0.98-1.26; P value for a joint test of statistical significance = 0.005). The effects were clinically modest, with a maximum effect of an absolute increase of 4.2% (95% CI: 0.9-7.8) at the end of the study period. The effect was greater in patients who did not require vasopressors compared with patients who required vasopressors ( P value for test of interaction = 0.02).

CONCLUSIONS

SEP-1 implementation was associated with modest increases in sepsis diagnosis rates, primarily among patients who did not require vasoactive medications.