The Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare reported it has unveiled a Reducing Sepsis Mortality Targeted Solutions Tool (TST), a web-based application to help providers reduce sepsis mortality and increase sepsis protocol compliance in pursuit of zero harm.
Sepsis — a severe reaction in response to an infection — is a top cause of death in hospitalized patients that costs the healthcare system at least $41 billion each year. It typically affects 1.7 million U.S. patients yearly, with about 270,000 of those cases resulting in death. Early recognition and effective treatment of sepsis not only saves lives but also frees up scarce resources and dollars that hospitals need for staff or to rebuild services and infrastructure.
Additionally, the Global Sepsis Alliance has confirmed that COVID-19 can cause sepsis, and that signs of multi-organ injury typical in sepsis cases occur in approximately two percent to 5 percent of COVID-19 cases. While it is still early in the pandemic — and data are continuously being collected and analyzed — some studies indicate sepsis may be the second leading cause of death among COVID-19 patients.
The Center’s release of the Reducing Sepsis Mortality TST follows a comprehensive quality improvement project that decreased mortality among the cohort by nearly 25 percent and a subsequent multi-hospital pilot that reduced mortality from nearly 20 percent to over 50 percent.
“The methods embedded in the sepsis TST are based on our robust quality improvement projects and informed by the experience of those participants to ensure it is a pragmatic and actionable tool for all health care providers,” said Anne Marie Benedicto, vice president and head of the Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare. “Once introduced and implemented into a health care organization, hospital or health system, the TST will help the organization identify customized interventions to increase identification of sepsis patients and reduce sepsis mortality.”
