HMS Partners with CDC & Sepsis Alliance for Awareness and Education
Even within the world of advanced modern medicine, sepsis and septic shock remain enigmas claiming the lives of otherwise healthy individuals every day. Sepsis is a syndromic response in the body and can be a final pathway to death from many infectious diseases.
Initiatives, Core Elements, and the Sepsis Toolkit
The Michigan Hospital Medicine Safety Consortium (HMS) launched a Sepsis Initiative across its collaborative of nearly 70 member hospitals in 2021. To improve outcomes, the initiative assesses the care of patients, from early identification through discharge and recovery at home.
Additionally, HMS partnered with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to develop the Hospital Sepsis Program Core Elements, a resource to help guide U.S. hospitals in the implementation, monitoring, and optimization of institutional sepsis programs and patient outcomes. Designed to adapt to the needs of any hospital, the Core Elements resources include an assessment tool that hospitals may use to implement the Core Elements of hospital-based sepsis care, as well as a Webinar Series to share examples of hospitals that incorporate aspects of the core elements in their care of sepsis patients. HMS worked with participating hospitals to present during the webinar series showcasing the impressive work across the state of Michigan during these webinars.
In tandem, the HMS Sepsis team developed a Sepsis Toolkit, a comprehensive resource of tools, publications, educational materials, etc for providers and hospital-based sepsis programs, to provide additional resources to augment the Core Elements. The toolkit is published on both the CDC and Sepsis Alliance websites.
A Strong Partnership with Sepsis Alliance
HMS’s work led to a partnership with the Sepsis Alliance, a national organization focused on bringing awareness to sepsis and reducing patient suffering by offering resources and education to healthcare workers.
The Sepsis Alliance connected HMS with national sepsis experts to take part in the Core Elements webinar series in 2023. Following the Core Elements webinar, and realizing there was a massive interest in HMS’s sepsis work, the two organizations came together again- this time focusing not only on sepsis education but on the Collaborative Quality Initiative (CQI) model.
On February 1, 2024, the alliance hosted Dr. Amy McKenzie of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan; Dr. Scott Flanders, HMS Program Director; Dr. Megan Cahill of Henry Ford Macomb Hospital and Dr. Hallie Prescott, HMS Quality Improvement Consultant and Sepsis Physician Lead for a live webinar event focused on HMS’s work with the CDC, the sepsis toolkit, and why sepsis is a priority for HMS and BCBSM, in addition to how the CQI model creates mutually beneficial relationships that improve patient care.
More than 500 people attended the February webinar, which is now available to watch on-demand through the Sepsis Alliance Institute. Many attendees were from outside of Michigan and expressed admiration for the power of the statewide collaborative model.
The Future of Sepsis Treatment in Michigan
Looking ahead, HMS anticipates more opportunities to partner with the Sepsis Alliance and the CDC to continue bringing awareness to the tools and resources that are available for providers. Additionally, they plan to expand the toolkit with a mortality model tool that will be used for hospital benchmarking and measuring our success in caring for patients with sepsis over time. The HMS team is also planning for more collaborative engagement through presentations, webinars, site visits with member hospitals, and continued engagement with national partners and sepsis leaders.
Additional resources can be found on the HMS website, mi-hms.org/.