WALTHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Each year in the United States, sepsis accounts for 270,000 deaths and costs nearly $27 billion — making it one of the largest cost drivers for U.S. hospitals.1 To quickly identify and best care for patients with sepsis or sepsis shock, Blessing Health System (Blessing), an integrated health system in Quincy, Illinois, has selected POC Advisor from Wolters Kluwer, Health.
By analyzing patient data in real-time and transforming it into actionable guidance, POC Advisor empowers clinicians to rapidly respond to sepsis symptoms and risk to make the most effective clinical decisions at the right time. The move expands Blessing's adoption of Wolters Kluwer's clinical surveillance suite by adding POC Advisor to its Sentri7 infection prevention and pharmacy surveillance solutions.
POC Advisor is in use at Blessing Hospital, the health system’s acute care hospital in Quincy, IL, and at its critical-access hospital in Pittsfield, IL, Illini Community Hospital.
The first signs of sepsis: early and accurate detection
Blessing employs a collaborative approach to sepsis symptom detection and management with various care settings across the health system. Historically, this process was largely retrospective and relied on a multi-disciplinary group of clinicians to review cases, track data, and outcomes, and stay up to date on evolving guidelines and protocols for sepsis management. Now with a sepsis coordinator on board using POC Advisor's centralized patient monitor and advanced analytics capabilities, Blessing can streamline manual, time-intensive processes. This sepsis surveillance solution monitors patients in real-time to better identify and alert on sepsis cases allowing clinicians to intervene earlier.
"Early detection of sepsis is a challenge for many health systems, and we were determined to tackle this through more proactive monitoring," said Mary Barthel, MD, Chief Quality and Safety Officer, Blessing Health System. "Using POC Advisor, we can now deliver real-time patient status updates to our clinicians so they can intervene immediately with an evidence-based approach to help save more lives and improve our sepsis bundle compliance. By combining advanced technology with our sepsis coordinator on the ground, we are better equipped to identify patients who develop sepsis earlier and optimize their care."
Tracking sepsis amid changing patient conditions
Every hour sepsis goes untreated mortality increases by about 8%.2 Wolters Kluwer's POC Advisor technology detects sepsis six hours earlier than common systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS)-triggered electronic health record (EHR) alerts by analyzing a broad spectrum of real-time data, monitoring trends, and assessing all data in the context of the patient's clinical status and co-morbid conditions. Alerts routed directly to a central monitor, into the EHR, or to point of care devices equip the bedside teams to act fast.
At Blessing, many providers rely on documenting patient conditions in text notes; POC Advisor's natural language processing (NLP) scours clinical notes for critical information missing from standardized EHR data that might indicate sepsis. Coupled with evidence-based recommendations for the treatment of sepsis, POC Advisor helps improve patient outcomes by ensuring the delivery of bundle care components.
Wolters Kluwer's team of clinical and informaticist experts supports the implementation. They optimize the use of POC Advisor by developing team workflows, building and maintaining the clinical rules that drive sepsis alerts, and providing detailed case reviews to clinical teams.
"Clinicians are already overloaded with alerts. Our Wolters Kluwer team is helping healthcare providers like Blessing break through this noise so they have actionable, timely, and specific recommendations that allow them to deliver high-quality care that adheres to the most current evidence," said Karen Kobelski, Vice President and General Manager of Clinical Surveillance Compliance & Data Solutions, Wolters Kluwer Health. "Blessing has made its sepsis program a priority, and we're honored to work hand in hand with the Blessing team to seamlessly integrate sepsis alerts into provider workflows to achieve the hospital’s goals."
Learn more about POC Advisor for sepsis identification and care management.
About Wolters Kluwer
Wolters Kluwer (WKL) is a global leader in professional information, software solutions, and services for the clinicians, nurses, accountants, lawyers, and tax, finance, audit, risk, compliance, and regulatory sectors. We help our customers make critical decisions every day by providing expert solutions that combine deep domain knowledge with advanced technology and services.
Wolters Kluwer reported 2021 annual revenues of €4.8 billion. The group serves customers in over 180 countries, maintains operations in over 40 countries, and employs approximately 19,800 people worldwide. The company is headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands.
Wolters Kluwer provides trusted clinical technology and evidence-based solutions that engage clinicians, patients, researchers and students in effective decision-making and outcomes across healthcare. We support clinical effectiveness, learning and research, clinical surveillance and compliance, as well as data solutions. For more information about our solutions, visit https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/health and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter @WKHealth.
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1 Hatfield et al. (2018) Assessing Variability in Hospital-Level Mortality Among U.S. Medicare Beneficiaries With Hospitalizations for Severe Sepsis and Septic Shock. Critical Care Medicine.
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