Sepsis Detection Programs Win Eisenberg Patient Safety Awards

May 14, 2020
Gordon Schiff, M.D., associate director of Brigham and Women’s Center for Patient Safety Research and Practice, wins individual award

The Joint Commission and the National Quality Forum have given their annual quality and safety awards to two programs focused on early sepsis detection.  

Each year the organizations gives out the John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety and Quality Awards. The awards program, launched in 2002, honors the late John M. Eisenberg, M.D., M.B.A., former administrator of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), an impassioned advocate for healthcare quality improvement.

This year the individual award went to Gordon Schiff, M.D., general internist and associate director of Brigham and Women’s Center for Patient Safety Research and Practice as well as quality and safety director for the Harvard Medical School Center for Primary Care. He also is an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Schiff has authored more than 250 articles and chapters, many of which are regarded as foundational works on medication safety, health informatics safety and diagnostic error. Additionally, he was a founding convener of the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine’s (SIDM) Diagnostic Error in Medicine international conference series and was an invited expert and reviewer of the National Academy of Medicine Report: Improving Diagnosis in Healthcare.

 Nashville-based HCA Healthcare was recognized for developing the world’s largest continuously operating sepsis surveillance system. Sepsis Prediction & Optimization of Therapy (SPOT) was implemented in a rolling fashion over 2018 in 164 of HCA Healthcare’s U.S. hospitals. An algorithm and workflow for early sepsis detection and treatment, SPOT uses data science to analyze sepsis development patterns across HCA Healthcare hospitals and can detect sepsis six hours earlier than traditional screenings. With the addition of SPOT, HCA saw an overall greater improvement in sepsis mortality, and with combined sepsis intervention efforts, nearly 8,000 patient lives have been saved since 2013.

 WellSpan Health in York, Pa., was lauded for its system-wide approach demonstrating an innovative combination of technology and trained medical staff to save lives and engage in early sepsis intervention: A Model Cell for Transformational Redesign. WellSpan has implemented a remote RN specialty trained telemonitoring “bunker” for early sepsis identification, which saved an estimated 227 lives in one year. The “bunker” offers a more efficient and replicable care model, providing early sepsis detection in most inpatient settings, emergency departments and waiting rooms for multiple hospitals. Early identification and screening times for possible sepsis patients improved from 67 minutes to 12 minutes.

 “This year’s Eisenberg Award recipients have demonstrated both a positive impact on the patients they serve as well as fulfilling the quality community’s mission to ensure that care is measured and can be improved,” said Shantanu Agrawal, M.D., M.Phil., president and CEO of the National Quality Forum. “The work of Dr. Schiff, HCA Healthcare, and WellSpan Health is an inspiration and a reminder that we each have a role to play in making sure care is safe for every person.”

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