West Virginia hospital committed to leveraging electronic surveillance platform for early identification and treatment of sepsis.
Wolters Kluwer, Health, a leading global provider of trusted clinical technology and evidence-based solutions, today announced that Cabell Huntington Hospital (CHH) has selected POC Advisor™ as their enterprise surveillance solution to rapidly and accurately identify and treat sepsis patients. The not-for-profit, regional hospital in West Virginia chose POC Advisor for its evidence-based decision support capabilities, advanced predictive technology and proven effectiveness after testing other sepsis surveillance methods.
“The complex nature of quickly and accurately identifying sepsis is important when selecting an electronic solution. We have to ensure that it does not generate too many false positives, which can lead to alert fatigue,” said Dennis Lee, Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Cabell Huntington Hospital. “We learned from previous experiences how critical it is to have the appropriate level of alert sensitivity and specificity, which is exactly why we selected POC Advisor. Wolters Kluwer's proven track record and commitment to providing the latest evidence and treatments directly aligns with our mission and values around excellence in patient care.”
Cabell Huntington Hospital is a 303-bed teaching hospital that is affiliated with Marshall University Schools of Medicine and Nursing. By integrating POC Advisor into the workflow at the point of care, CHH clinicians will receive patient-specific, evidence-based alerts and advice when they need it most. The platform draws upon real-time patient data from the electronic health record (EHR), including vital signs, medications, physicians’ notes, comorbidities and lab results. POC Advisor has demonstrated a 95 percent sensitivity and 82 percent specificity of alerts, as documented in a peer-review study in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA). The study found POC Advisor also helped clinicians reduce sepsis mortality by 50 percent and related 30-day readmissions by 30 percent.
“To accurately and efficiently identify sepsis, Cabell Huntington Hospital needed a solution that could bring surveillance and relevant clinical decision support into the clinician’s workflow,” said Karen Kobelski, General Manager of Safety and Surveillance at Wolters Kluwer, Health. “POC Advisor addresses this challenge head-on by providing clinicians with trusted medical evidence to empower confident decisions that will improve clinical outcomes while lowering costs.”
Nationally, an average 270,000 people in the United States die from sepsis each year and it remains the costliest condition to treat in the U.S., totaling about $27 billion. Worldwide, sepsis is the leading cause of preventable death, affecting 26 million people. However, with an enterprise surveillance and identification solution like POC Advisor, hospitals can lower their sepsis mortality rates and readmissions, along with the length of stay.
CHH will begin implementing the solution in the coming months. For more details on POC Advisor, please visit www.pocadvisor.com.
