In 2023, Baton Rouge, La.-based FMOL Health introduced a rapid sepsis diagnostic tool, and since then, the 10-hospital system has reduced sepsis mortality 24% and saved a life every three days.
Since rolling out the tool across the organization, FMOL Health has achieved a 19% reduction in mortality among patients without sepsis, a 14% decrease in antibiotic utilization and about 30,000 fewer hospital days over two years.
Christopher Thomas, MD, chief quality officer and vice president at FMOL Health, said the system has also recorded a 30% decrease in blood culture utilization. He also noted a 15% increase in safe discharges from the emergency department, defined as a discharge that does not result in a readmission within three days.
“As of today, we’ve been able to test and evaluate over 80,000 patients and maintain those percent reductions over that period of time throughout all of our hospitals,” Dr. Thomas said in a Sept. 25 recording for “Becker’s Healthcare Podcast.”
“The most remarkable part was, you’re talking about an academic hospital, a community hospital, a large safety net hospital in Monroe, La., and then another large specialized complex medical center in Jackson, [Miss.],” he said. “And each one of them has the same trends: reduction in antibiotic exposure, improvement in blood culture resource utilization, mortality reduction in the sepsis patients, mortality reduction in patients proven not to have sepsis, and then what I refer to is increasing the dinner table conversations.”
Increasing dinner table conversations is how he qualifies the 30,000 reduction in hospital days: an additional 30,000 at-home dinners with family members that patients would not have had otherwise.
On the financial side, “FMOL Health [has] returned nearly $25 million to the healthcare system through a reduction in days spent in the hospital,” the system said Sept. 1.
The tool, IntelliSep, can detect sepsis within approximately eight to 10 minutes from a blood draw. The most surprising feedback after launch, Dr. Thomas said, was how often clinicians had been wrong about sepsis.
Before the tool, patients who came in with a certain set of vital signs would all get a sepsis diagnosis. About three months after launch, the team found that roughly half of those patients actually had a different disease, according to Dr. Thomas, who is also a practicing intensivist.
For health systems looking to replicate the work, Dr. Thomas said to start by reducing variability. He also urged leaders to innovate, and to measure what they try.
“Don’t be afraid to do something that’s novel. But if you’re going to do something novel, study it, and then share it,” he said.
Who is in the room matters, too. FMOL Health’s quality team won’t hold meetings on major projects unless at least three disciplines are present.
“If you’re in a room with one discipline or two disciplines, just think: Is it possible for the topic you’re talking about for the patient to only see those two disciplines during a hospital stay?” Dr. Thomas said. “The answer is no. Stop the meeting. Go figure out who would see the patient and restart it again.”
