Utilization of a Visit-Based Sepsis Assessment to Prevent Hospital Readmissions

Sepsis results in 270,000 deaths annually in the United States. Despite the current healthcare focus on sepsis, there exist few postacute best-practice standards to rapidly identify health changes in home healthcare patients to prevent and reduce hospital readmissions due to sepsis. We systematically examined whether an evidence-based process and intervention triggering home healthcare clinicians to activate a Positive Sepsis Assessment would reduce the likelihood that the patient would be readmitted to the acute care hospital. Over 24 months, we tracked the rate of sepsis readmissions to acute care hospitals through the initial phase of early recognition education; assessment, review, and revision of best-practice algorithms; standardized documentation; and proactive care management, in conjunction with the patient's primary care provider. During our review of the last 12 months of data on home care patients triggering the Positive Sepsis Assessment 130 patients were identified to have potential signs of sepsis. Ninety-seven of these patients received early medical intervention in place and were not readmitted to the hospital. Our findings suggest that a multidisciplinary home healthcare team utilizing standard sepsis education and sepsis algorithm on every patient during every visit can reduce and prevent readmissions.