Improving Pediatric Sepsis Outcomes (IPSO) is successfully challenging sepsis.
Every year, 80,000 children are hospitalized for sepsis in the U.S. Almost 5,000 children die from sepsis, more than from cancer, and 25 percent to 40 percent of those who survive sepsis suffer from long-term health issues.
Improving Pediatric Sepsis Outcomes (IPSO) is a national collaborative that aims to reduce sepsis-attributable mortality and improve survivor outcomes through early identification and timely treatment. Sepsis can be difficult to diagnose, and effective recognition is complex—requiring high levels of coordination. To meet the challenge, IPSO hospitals are simultaneously driving improvement in diagnostic processes, clinical care, infection prevention, lab, pharmacy, decision support, and data infrastructure—and doing so across multiple settings: ED, PICU, general care, hematology/oncology and transplant units.
More than 57 children’s hospitals are collaborating through IPSO to successfully challenge sepsis and generate ideas for improvement.
Collaboration Leads to Significant Improvement
Collective data from collaborative hospitals demonstrates that IPSO strategies are succeeding in identifying sepsis earlier and initiating more timely treatment:
19%
decrease in sepsis-related mortality
30%
increase in sepsis patients being recognized
30%
increase in the use of sepsis recognition and diagnostic bundles
6%
decrease in hospital days per sepsis episodes
7%
decrease in time to first fluid bolus
10%
decrease in time to first IV antibiotic
Growing Data Sets Open the Gates for New Knowledge
The IPSO data sets are large enough to answer important research questions about ideal identification and treatment for pediatric sepsis patients.
- 49,000 IPSO Sepsis Episodes
- 171,000 IPSO Suspected Infection
- 13,000 IPSO Critical Sepsis Episodes
- 220,000 Total Sepsis Episodes—largest sepsis data set in pediatrics
Pediatric Sepsis Guidelines Released by Surviving Sepsis Campaign
The Surviving Sepsis Campaign, which included several members of the IPSO leadership group, released its first evidence-based guidelines for the pediatric patient population “Surviving Sepsis Campaign International Guidelines for the Management of Septic Shock and Sepsis-Associated Organ Dysfunction in Children”. IPSO’s treatment bundles are well aligned with the new guidelines.
5 Key Processes to Affect Outcomes
Evidence shows the five key processes accelerate progress toward reducing mortality and hospital-onsetsevere sepsis. IPSO sites remain focused on these processes and are continuing to improve.
- Sepsis screening
- Sepsis huddle
- Order set utilization
- Time to first fluid bolus
- Time to first IV antibiotic
Participation Leads to Improved Data Infrastructure
Collaboration resulted in improved information by:
- Closing gaps in sepsis patient documentation.
- Standardizing sepsis documentation and tools.
- Addressing sepsis coding inconsistencies.
- Accessing data previously fragmented in multiple systems.
Collaboration improved EMR capability by:
- Facilitating clinical decision support; e.g., trigger tools, best practice alerts.
- Improving EMR documentation.
- Automating sepsis data collection.
- Shared queries/reports for EPIC, Cerner, etc.