New clinical pathways that have proven to reduce harm from sepsis are now available for Victorian clinicians.
Sepsis is one of the leading causes of death in hospital patients worldwide. It is a time-critical illness requiring early identification and prompt intervention to improve patient outcomes.
Together with healthcare staff and consumers we have tested ways to improve early recognition and management of sepsis:
- Clinical pathways for emergency departments and urgent care centres, as well as educational resources to help implement them
- A whole of hospital adults sepsis pathway, with a toolkit to support broad implementation.
Pathways for emergency departments and urgent care centres
These pathways were tested by 32 Victorian health services as part of the Implementing a sepsis bundle of care project.
The project increased recognition and timely treatment of patients presenting with sepsis and a decreased need to transfer patients to ICU, a high dependency unit or to another hospital.
A change package has been produced to support health services to implement the pathways successfully.
Whole of hospital pathway and toolkit
Originally developed by Melbourne Health, we expanded this pathway and toolkit to 11 health services through our ‘Think Sepsis. Act Fast.’ scaling collaboration. This project:
- saved 52 lives
- avoided 96 ICU admissions
- reduced total hospital length of stay by more than 3,780 bed days
- saved $11.7 million based on reduced length of stay and reduction in cost
- demonstrated a six-fold return on investment.