To develop the algorithm, researchers used data on suspected or confirmed sepsis cases at CHOP from July 1, 2018 to Jan. 31, 2019. They then tested the algorithm with data on 832,550 emergency department or inpatient visits at CHOP between 2011 and 2018.
Among 207,368 hospital admissions recorded over this period, the incidence of sepsis was 27.8 episodes per 1,000 admissions. The hospital’s sepsis mortality rate was 6.7 percent and did not change over time. However, when researchers used claims-based data to assess sepsis mortality, this figure dropped overtime.
“We were able for the first time to have a consistent, objective and unbiased definition of sepsis applied over a period of eight years, without having to rely on laborious and expensive manual chart review or claims data that suffer from variability across providers and time,” lead author Scott Weiss, MD, an attending physician at CHO’s pediatric intensive care unit, said in a press release.
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