EHR vendors and sepsis solutions could be the perfect pairing.
A new report from KLAS found providers are more frequently turning to EHR vendors’ technology to detect and treat sepsis.
A Personalized Approach to Medication Nonadherence
At the Abarca Forward conference earlier this year, George Van Antwerp, managing director at Deloitte, discussed how social determinants of health and a personalized member experience can improve medication adherence and health outcomes.
For the report, KLAS interviewed 95 providers who were using sepsis solutions. Of those, 69 percent said they saw improved outcomes, including up to a 50 percent decrease in mortality rates. Other benefits included decreased costs, lower readmission rates and shorter length of stay.
Another 23 percent of respondents claimed it was too soon to tell if the technology they were using was delivering measurable results.
KLAS found a few vendors stood a step ahead of the rest of the pack as far as adoption rates. Among the providers interviewed, the adoption of Cerner’s and Epic’s sepsis technology was higher than that of all the other sepsis solutions combined.
As one IT director told KLAS:
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We have been using [the Cerner sepsis] product for seven months with excellent results. The protocols and criteria are very inclusive and thorough. Reducing septic shock and sepsis is very beneficial to us and our patients. The solution has reduced length-of-stay numbers, mortality and readmissions.
But the solutions from those two vendors vary dramatically. KLAS noted that although Cerner’s solution is easy to deploy, Epic’s presents a bit more of a challenge. Users of the Epic solution “report the need for significant in-house effort for implementation and integration into workflows,” KLAS claimed.
KLAS pointed out that although Meditech recently created a sepsis solution, not many other vendors have developed easily deployable sepsis tools. Therefore, providers are turning to other vendors such as Wolters Kluwer and VigiLanz.
Additionally, as part of the report, KLAS touched base with 102 providers who hadn’t adopted sepsis solutions. Of those providers, 53 percent said they’re thinking about using an EHR module or in-house development using an EHR platform. Another 19 percent said they’re mulling over adopting a third-party solution. The remaining 28 percent said they’re currently not considering any solutions.
Their reasoning? As one vice president of quality told KLAS, “[d]eciding to do something about sepsis needs to be a hospital’s or health system’s first step prior to thinking about what tools to use.”
Using software to help combat sepsis is far from new. Going forward, one can only hope its usage brings down the number of preventable deaths caused by sepsis in the United States. “Up to half of hospital deaths are due to sepsis, according to research published in The Journal of the American Medical Association,” said KLAS analyst and coauthor of the report Kody Hansen.
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