There are a number of reasons why hospitals are looking for improvement opportunities to reduce sepsis rates: sepsis costs lives, sepsis adds significant expense to care, and high sepsis rates lead to financial penalties. The three key solutions include an enterprise data warehouse, sophisticated healthcare analytics applications and dashboards, and permanent cross-functional teams for sustainable sepsis improvements.

1. Improving Outcomes
for Sepsis Patients:
3 Key Solutions Proven to Help
― Paul Horstmeier

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Using Data to Reduce Sepsis Incidents
Data seems more valuable
when used to improve patient
outcomes and save lives.
Take, for example, sepsis.
Health systems want to
reduce sepsis for many
reasons, including:
• Sepsis cost lives
• Sepsis adds significant costs to care
• High sepsis rates lead to financial penalties

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Becoming Data-Driven
To become truly data-driven, three
critical components must be included
with any data strategy:
• An enterprise data warehouse
• Sophisticated analytics applications
• Permanent teams

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A Sepsis Reduction Success Story
1: Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW)
An EDW’s ability to pull in data
from many source systems
(e.g., research, lab, registration,
pathology, radiology, ambulatory
surgery) and store all of that
data in one central repository,
provides the organization with a
single source of truth.

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A Sepsis Reduction Success Story
1: Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW)
How an EDW enabled a health system
to improve staff compliance with sepsis
assessment protocols:
• History and Goals – The organization
set a goal of improving sepsis patients’
assessments.
• Tactic – Embraced an EDW as the
foundation for a set of sophisticated
analytic applications.
• Early Results – An 80 percent relative
increase in nurses’ compliance with
completing assessments.
Read a more in-depth review of the challenges the organization overcame

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A Sepsis Reduction Success Story
2: Sophisticated Analytics Applications
Analytics allowed this health system to
measure and adjust processes to
improve sepsis interventions:
• History and Goals – The organization
leveraged its EDW to measure sepsis
incidents and outcomes.
• Tactic – They deployed the Population
Explorer Analytics Advanced Application—
Sepsis Module.
• Early Results – The organization created a
sepsis registry and established a sepsis
analytics program in a mere 10 weeks.
Read a more in-depth review of the challenges the organization overcame

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A Sepsis Reduction Success Story
3: Established Permanent Cross-Functional Teams
To maintain improvements and gains
the health system formed teams with
stakeholders – physicians, nurses,
technical staff and administrators:
• History and Goals – The health system set
the goal to improve sepsis rates.
• Tactic – Established a system-wide critical
care collaborative.
• Early Results – Reduced sepsis mortality
rates by an average of 22 percent, which
led to more than $1.3M in cost savings.
Read a more in-depth review of the challenges the organization overcame

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Tackling Sepsis with Data
Despite the challenges it’s critical
that health systems find ways to
decrease sepsis rates.
High rates can have significant
negative impacts on outcomes and
greatly increase costs.
Healthcare-specific solutions, such
as an EDW and advanced analytics,
can unlock key data sources crucial
to reducing incidents of sepsis.

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More about this topic
Data-Driven Healthcare That Works: a Physician Group Perspective
Dr. Gregory Spencer, CMO & CMIO, Crystal Run Healthcare
Best Solution to Aggregate Healthcare Data
Eric Just, VP
The Three Systems Critical to Analytics Success
Eric Just, VP
How to Reduce Sepsis Mortality Rates by 22%
A Success Story
How to Improve Sepsis Diagnosis and Outcomes
A Success Story
Link to original article for a more in-depth discussion.
Improving Outcomes for Sepsis Patients: 3 Key Solutions Proven to Help

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For more information:

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Other Clinical Quality Improvement Resources
Click to read additional information at www.healthcatalyst.com
Paul Horstmeier brings 25 years of Fortune 500 and small business operations and
general management experience to Health Catalyst. He co-founded HB Ventures and
filled senior executive roles at HB Ventures portfolio companies. Within Hewlett-
Packard, Mr. Horstmeier launched and grew three different businesses, including co-
founding HP's commercial e-commerce business which later expanded to include the
management of the data systems and infrastructure for marketing operations across
the company. As Vice President of HP.com, he headed up a 700-person organization which was
awarded nearly every industry award for quality and innovation during his tenure.