By Katie Wike, contributing writer
Adding a surveillance tool to hospitals’ EHR systems has proven to improve clinical outcomes and prevent sepsis for patients.
This spring, researchers from UC Davis found routine EHR information could be used in combination with an algorithm to predict the early stages of sepsis in patients. “EHRs have become essential resources for providing relevant information on patients’ medical histories and improving the quality of care,” said study co-author Tim Albertson, chair of UC Davis Department of Internal Medicine. “We have shown that they can also be powerful resources for identifying best practices in medicine and reducing patient mortality.”
Now, a second study shows EHR surveillance technology can serve the same purpose, predicting sepsis before it becomes a problem. A study published in Heart and Lung set out “to evaluate the effects of this EHR surveillance on sepsis, severe sepsis or septic shock outcomes in patients admitted to a medical telemetry unit, including length of hospital stay, patient discharge and mortality.”
Researchers used an EHR-based sepsis surveillance system for patients admitted to a medical telemetry unit with sepsis, severe sepsis or septic shock. According to Becker’s Hospital Review, they found the rates of home discharge increased from 25.3 percent pre-implementation to 49.0 percent post-implementation. They also found hospital mortality rates fell from 9.3 percent to 1 percent.
“These results offer promising evidence that the use of an EHR sepsis surveillance alert could decrease the ravishing effects of sepsis, severe sepsis and septic shock by early identification and treatment,” concluded the Heart and Lung researchers.
“Finding a precise and quick way to determine which patients are at high risk of developing the disease is critically important,” said UC Davis study co-author Hien Nguyen, associate professor of internal medicine and medical director of electronic health records at UC Davis.
