Sepsis is the body’s response to infection. It can be caused from a simple infection like strep throat, the flu, or a urinary tract infection. Interestingly, sepsis kills more people every year than heart attacks and strokes, yet it is often confused with other illnesses. Each year, 750,000 people in the United States develop severe sepsis, and of those, 200,000 die of this condition.
Leadership at Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare wanted to stop these deaths that can often be prevented if caught in time. A team of doctors, nurses, and IT staff worked together to create an electronic alert within its Cerner Millennium® electronic medical record system that displays an alert box that immediately notifies a patient’s care team when the patient begins to exhibit signs of sepsis. This warning gives clinicians time to initiate a sepsis treatment protocol to prevent the syndrome from getting worse.
“The sepsis alert confirms that these types of electronic tools are critical to improving the quality of patient care,” explained Bill Tettlebach, M.D., who led the rules development team that oversees rules and alerts in the system. “The rules enable physicians to intervene more quickly in diagnosing time sensitive illnesses such as sepsis.”
Symptoms for sepsis include fever or low body temperature, fast heart rate, rapid breathing, confusion or decreased alertness, low blood pressure, or the subtle new onset of organ dysfunction, all of which can easily be mistaken for other conditions.
“The warning indicators for sepsis can easily be confused with other ailments,” explained Dr. Karen Hopper, chief medical officer at Methodist North Hospital. “There is a crucial six hour window to recognize and stop the sepsis downward spiral that can cause a patient to die.”
Kaye Stewart is just one example of how sepsis is helping to save lives. In early 2008, Stewart was taken to Methodist Le Bonheur Germantown Hospital in extreme pain where she learned she had a very large kidney stone that was completely blocking her kidney. She was scheduled for a simple surgery that would break the stone apart. While in recovery, Stewart developed a fever and her blood pressure became dangerously low. It turned out that once the kidney stone had been broken apart, the large quantity of built-up urine in her system triggered the onset of a kidney infection that turned into sepsis, a deadly syndrome that could have killed her.
“The sepsis alert tool within the Cerner Millennium electronic medical record helped us prevent Kaye from going into septic shock, and quite likely saved her life,” said Dr. Franc Fenaughty, the medical director of emergency services for Methodist Le Bonheur Germantown Hospital where she was treated. “Because the sepsis alert was triggered, we caught the warning signs quickly and were able to stop this life-threatening condition in its tracks before it could harm her.”
The sepsis alert program that was piloted at MNH and has been implemented in Methodist Le Bonheur’s six other hospitals. Since the alert has been in place at MNH, it has fired more than 4,000 times, potentially saving the lives of each of those patients.
Looking back Stewart reflects on what could have happened to her had Methodist not had the sepsis alerting system in place.
“I probably would have died if the sepsis alert hadn’t been in place,” Stewart said. “If I would have gone home after the surgery, my condition would have worsened. I would have been very sick and they would have had to have brought me back to the hospital. But this time, I wouldn’t have left the hospital alive. I try not to think too much about the ‘what if.’”
Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare, a seven-hospital system, began working with Kansas City, Mo.-based Cerner in 2002 to use Cerner Millennium healthcare computing platform to unify the hospital system’s various clinical systems, including patient access, patient management, patient billing, pharmacy, radiology, emergency services, operating room services, laboratory, scheduling and registration.
About Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare
Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare is an integrated healthcare delivery system based in Memphis, Tenn. Founded in 1918 by The United Methodist Church to help meet the growing need for quality healthcare in the Mid-South, Methodist Healthcare has grown from one hospital into a seven-hospital system that also includes a home health agency, ambulatory surgery centers, and outpatient facilities serving the Memphis area. For the last several years, Methodist has been named in Modern Healthcare magazine, as a Top 100 Integrated Healthcare Network. For more information about Methodist, visit www.methodisthealth.org.
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