As September draws to a close, so does this year’s “Sepsis Awareness Month.” 

With the hopes of extending attention beyond this month on a condition that kills someone every 2 minutes in America, we reached out to Sean Benson, Vice President and General Manager of Specialized Surveillance, Wolters Kluwer Health, to learn more about sepsis’ impacts and the factors hospital administrators ought to consider when creating an effective plan of action to improve health outcomes and lower cost at the same time. 

Mr. Benson co-founded ProVation Medical, now part of Wolters Kluwer Health, in 1994. He has been closely involved in most areas of the company’s operations, including Research & Development, Product Management, Sales, Marketing, Business Development and Client Services. Most recently, he has overseen the company’s newest clinical surveillance platform, POC Advisor.

(Editor’s note: To hear audio excerpts of this interview, click on the media player buttons that run throughout this article.)

Wolters Kluwer Health and Vocera Communications,  (VCRA) have teamed to arm Halifax Health with a high-powered surveillance solution to advance its battle against sepsis. Linking the real-time clinical surveillance and analytics of the POC Advisor platform with Vocera’s hands-free communications technology and mobile app accelerates the diagnosis of sepsis and the timely delivery of patient-specific advice to nurses and other clinical staff at the point of care.

“Time is the enemy when it comes to sepsis, with the likelihood of death increasing by 8 percent for each hour that passes without treatment,” said Ginny Kwong, M.D., Vice President and Chief Medical Information Officer for Halifax Health. “Complicating early diagnosis is the need to aggregate data scattered across multiple clinical systems before it can be analyzed, and the results communicated to the point of care in a meaningful way.

Daria Byrne, Vice President of Product Management, PeraHealth

While not widely recognized or understood by the general population, sepsis, a serious medical condition caused by an immune response to infection according to the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, has a significant impact on U.S. healthcare. Not only is sepsis a major patient safety concern, but it is also the leading cause of hospital mortality and the nation’s third leading cause of death. In fact, sepsis contributes to one in every two to three deaths, resulting in 258,000 patient deaths each year. Moreover, it’s considered the most expensive condition to treat in the U.S. healthcare system, costing more than $24 billion each year.

Stephen Claypool, MD, Medical Director, POC Advisor, Wolters Kluwer

“Evaluating the Impact of a Computerized Surveillance Algorithm and Decision Support System on Sepsis Mortality,” appeared in the June print edition of The Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA). This study examined how clinicians at Alabama’s Huntsville Hospital decreased sepsis-related deaths by 53 percent during a 10-month period using a combination of clinical change management and electronic alerting from POC Advisor, a highly-accurate clinical decision support (CDS) software.

To learn more about this important implementation, we contacted Dr. Claypool, MD, Medical Director, POC Advisor, Wolters Kluwer.

(Editor’s note: To hear audio excerpts of this interview, click on the media player buttons that run throughout this article.)

Sepsis Alliance joins with billions of people around the world in mourning the death of Muhammad Ali, the boxing legend known as “The Greatest.” Ali, who had been battling Parkinson’s Disease since his diagnosis in 1984, has died from septic shock due to unspecified natural causes after having been admitted to a Phoenix-area hospital five days ago due to respiratory issues.

Ali’s official cause of death was disclosed today by a spokesperson for the family. Sepsis Alliance extends its deepest condolences to the entire Ali family during this difficult time of loss.

“We are incredibly saddened to hear of Muhammad Ali’s death from septic shock,” said Thomas Heymann, Executive Director of Sepsis Alliance. “Ali was a hero in many ways who inspired people to push ahead through adversity, and our thoughts and prayers are with his family during this difficult time. By his family’s disclosing sepsis as the cause of death, Muhammad Ali has likely saved countless lives by raising awareness of sepsis, a medical emergency which requires rapid treatment to save lives.”

The Health division of Wolters Kluwer, a leading global provider of information and point of care solutions for the healthcare industry, announced today that The Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA) has published a study by researchers Sharad Manaktala, MD, PhD, et al. detailing a significant reduction in sepsis mortality using automated surveillance and real-time analysis. The study examines how clinicians at Alabama’s Huntsville Hospital decreased sepsis-related deaths by 53 percent during a 10-month period using a combination of clinical change management and electronic alerting from POC Advisor, a highly-accurate clinical decision support (CDS) software. The system’s alerts detect sepsis early and guide clinicians to deliver the appropriate treatment, resulting in a breakthrough in alert accuracy, reaching 95 percent sensitivity and 82 percent specificity during the study period.

The study, “Evaluating the Impact of a Computerized Surveillance Algorithm and Decision Support System on Sepsis Mortality,” is currently available online and will appear in the June print edition of JAMIA.

The Health division of Wolters Kluwer, a leading global provider of information and point of care solutions for the healthcare industry, will showcase its cloud-based decision support platform for the improved diagnosis and treatment of sepsis in Booth #5537 at the HIMSS16 Conference & Exhibition. POC Advisor, which reduced sepsis mortality by 53 percent at Huntsville Hospital, integrates and functions seamlessly with the clinical workflow, leveraging electronic alerts and patient-specific, evidence-based treatment advice to drive down sepsis rates.

In December 2015, Halifax Health, East Central Florida’s largest healthcare provider, decided to partner with Wolters Kluwer to adopt POC Advisor into its clinical workflow. Halifax, home to Florida’s largest emergency department (ED) with more than 116,000 emergency visits annually, will be the first to adopt POC Advisor for use in the ED.

“Administering early treatment is imperative to surviving sepsis; however, a number of other conditions present with similar symptoms, which makes diagnosis at the onset challenging.” said Zabrina Evens, M.D., Sepsis BPCI Medical Director for Halifax Health. “For example, in an emergency environment, especially one with a patient population as large as ours, it’s extremely difficult for clinicians to scrutinize the data necessary for early identification for every patient. Partnering with Wolters Kluwer provides our staff with the best opportunity to improve sepsis care and save patients’ lives.”

Chuni (Ginny) Kwong, MD, Vice President, Chief Medical Information Officer, Halifax Health

In a previous set of interviews with Jim O’Brien, MD, MSc, Vice President of Quality and Patient Safety, Ohio Health Riverside Methodist Hospital and Stephen Claypool, MD, Medical Director, POC Advisor, Wolters Kluwer, we learned about the ravages of sepsis and how POC Advisor’s electronic surveillance and alerts assist in sepsis detection.  

To continue our “Countdown to HIMSS’16” series, I contacted Ginny Kwong, MD, Vice President, Chief Medical Information Officer, Halifax Health. Dr. Kwong and her organization just recently partnered with Wolters Kluwer (HIMSS’16 booth #5537) to implement POC Advisor in 2016. 

When we spoke, some of the topics she outlined included:

• how healthcare has approached sepsis in the past;
• the inherent difficulties of accurately detecting sepsis;
• her philosophy for working effectively with vendors;
• the steps Halifax Health took in selecting Wolters Kluwer as a partner to address sepsis and
• her organization’s projected goals for POC Advisor.

(Editor’s note: This is part one of a two-part series. We will publish the progress of Halifax Health’s efforts utilizing POC Advisor to address sepsis later in the year. To hear audio excerpts of this interview, click on the media player buttons that run throughout this article.)

Historically, sepsis has been one of the most important medical conditions in the United States, yet it is not properly appreciated by many in terms of its real significance. Unlike heart disease and cancer, where most people at least generally know about the tremendous number of deaths and the financial impacts they create, sepsis is somewhat of a mystery to the general public.

According to the National Institute of General Medical Studies, sepsis strikes more than a million Americans every year and between 28 and 50 percent of these people die – far more than the number of U.S. deaths from prostate cancer, breast cancer and AIDS combined. While a great deal of improvement has been made in treating high-profile conditions in the last 10-15 years, sepsis is lagging behind in where it could and should be in terms of care. It costs billions of dollars to the healthcare industry, but by-and-large, care for sepsis in the United States is sub-par. 

To learn more about sepsis and its seemingly ambiguous presence within day-to-day healthcare environments, I spoke with Jim O’Brien, MD, MSc, Vice President of Quality and Patient Safety, Ohio Health Riverside Methodist Hospital, an 860-bed community teaching hospital in Columbus, Ohio.