Capitol Report | April 2021
Aided with a new grant from the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation, HCA has been preparing for the launch of a major new phase in our efforts to fight sepsis in the home care setting — specifically the extremely challenging area of pediatric sepsis.
Our Stop Sepsis at Home initiative is already adopted in nearly every county of New York State. Through this existing initiative, providers are using an HCA-developed screening tool to identify sepsis risk among adults at home.
Over 80% of life-threatening sepsis cases originate in the community, even though many people associate sepsis with hospital-acquired infection, which is why it is so important to equip home care nurses with this screening tool to help identify sepsis as a matter of routine during home visits for other conditions or needs.
The HCA pediatric tool now under development will follow the basic design of HCA’s current adult sepsis screening tool, algorithm and protocol; yet it will be adapted for the exact clinical measures to match key and specific age categories for pediatric assessments.
HCA is working with clinical experts from the HCA membership, individual members of the HCA Board of Directors, pediatric sepsis clinicians, national Sepsis Alliance and Global Sepsis Alliance clinicians, and other sepsis advisors to select and surgically align the criteria for the age groups. Once vetted through this process, the draft tool will undergo beta testing. After further analysis or refinement, it will then be pilot tested by four major health systems with home health pediatric programs.
Like the HCA adult sepsis tool, this would be the first tool of its kind in the nation developed for system-wide use in pediatric home care.
HCA looks forward to announcing these and other major exciting steps with our 2021 sepsis initiative soon.