The pilot of an innovative sepsis reduction program at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City reduced sepsis mortality by 40 percent on participating inpatient floors and in the emergency department.
The Stop Sepsis program used clinical decision support in Mount Sinai's electronic medical record system that incorporates data-based best practices for identifying potential sepsis cases. Mount Sinai nurses also received additional EMR and clinical training to identify sepsis warning signs and know when to call the Stop Sepsis Team, a group of dedicated nurse practitioners.
"When we began the program, the mean sepsis mortality rate was about 33 percent … now it's at 16 percent," Charles Powell, MD, chief of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Mount Sinai, told the Journal of the Canadian Medical Association. "We're now able to identify patients with sepsis earlier and standardize our response, and using our EMR data, we're also able to measure that response in terms of timeliness and outcomes, including transfers to intensive care and mortality."
Based on the success of the pilot, Mount Sinai will launch the program hospitalwide in January 2014.
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