In a viewpoint piece for JAMA, two U-M researchers explain why the federal government should set standards and targets for the kind of care sepsis patients receive, to give them better survival odds. The program, they say, should incentivize better detection, start with regional collaboratives and act on new evidence from sepsis research.
“We believe that by creating a framework for quality improvement in sepsis care that takes into account evolving knowledge of this condition, we can improve patients’ odds of survival and reduce variation in care,” says Colin Cooke, MD, a U-M critical care physician and co-author of the viewpoint article.
CMS has approved a set of sepsis measures it will start tracking in 2017 and has required hospitals to report adherence to a sepsis management bundle, but Dr. Cooke and his co-author, Theodore Iwashyna, MD, PhD, say this will not be sufficient, and they would like sepsis quality measures to be able to adapt to new findings.
Instead, the authors say a sepsis quality initiative should look at hospitals and health systems that have cut their sepsis mortality rates, learn from their experiences and test them on a larger scale, like a single state. “This approach keeps the process moving forward, while avoiding the mistakes that can come from setting a national mandate without testing whether it will work in the way they hope,” a news release states.
More articles on sepsis:
Biospleen device could revolutionize sepsis treatment
5 recent sepsis findings
CDC recognizes September as Sepsis Awareness Month
