Improving Compliance with the CMS SEP-1 Sepsis Bundle at a Community-Based Teaching Hospital Emergency Department

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) designed Hospital Quality Initiatives (HQI) to assure delivery of quality health care for institutions receiving Medicare payments. Like many teaching institutions, the SEP-1 compliance rates at McLaren Oakland in Pontiac fluctuated monthly and were not achieving institutional target expectations.

The project team designed a Sepsis Macro and a Sepsis Order Set in the electronic medical record system. The project team also implemented an educational initiative targeted at emergency medicine resident and attending physicians. The educational initiative instructed emergency medicine resident and attending physicians in the metrics measured in the SEP-1 bundle as well as how to properly use the newly designed Sepsis Macro and Sepsis Order Set.

After implementation of the Sepsis Macro and Sepsis Order Set, the overall compliance with the SEP-1 bundle improved from 57% to 62%, above national averages and at the institutional target expectations. However, there were not statistically significant differences (p = 0.562) between the compliance rate before and after program implementation (Pre = 57% (SD = 0.27); 95% CI: 0.29 - 0.85); Post= 62% (SD = 0.11); 95% CI: 0.55 - 0.70). After program implementation the SEP-1 compliance rate was met in 82% of the months in comparison with 50% of the months in the pre-intervention (p = 0.28).

Although not achieving statistical significance, this intervention demonstrated that simple, cost-effective measures of education and standardization in documentation and order entry in EMR's can improve clinically significant compliance to CMS HQI metrics in community-based teaching institutions.