Table 1.
Characteristics of Patient Cohorts.a
| Patient Cohort | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Characteristic | Cohort A: Early Recognition by the Sepsis CDS | Cohort B: Provider Suspected Infection Before Activation of First Alert | Cohort C: Diagnostics Not Available | |||
| Hospitalized patients with an activated alert, n (%) | 195 | (3) | 417 | (7) | 205 | (3) |
| Age, mean (SD), years | 59 | (20) | 59 | (18) | 53 | (20) |
| Male sex, n (%) | 101 | (51) | 217 | (52) | 105 | (51) |
| First alert SIRS, n (%) | 113 | (58) | 212 | (51) | 137 | (67) |
| Confirmed infection by chart review method, n (%) | 75 | (66) | 128 | (60) | Unable to determine | |
| First alert severe SIRS, n (%) | 82 | (42) | 205 | (49) | 68 | (33) |
| Confirmed infection by chart review method, n (%) | 51 | (62) | 125 | (61) | Unable to determine | |
| First alert to diagnostic collect, median [IQR], hours | 8.6 | [1.7 to 38.7] | −4.4 | [−22.0 to −0.4] | NA | |
| Sepsis diagnosis code documented at discharge from hospital, n (%) | 60 | (31) | 144 | (35) | 0 | (0) |
Abbreviations: CDS, clinical decision support; IQR, interquartile range; NA, not applicable; SD, standard deviation; SIRS, systemic inflammatory response syndrome.
a
There were 6200 patient hospitalizations; n = 817 (13.2%) had an activated alert. Of the remaining 5383 patients who did not have an activated alert, 80 patients had a sepsis diagnosis code documented at discharge from hospital. Prevalence of sepsis using diagnosis code methodology was 4.6%, increasing to 7.4% when applying a blended chart review and diagnosis code methodological approach. Regarding cohort C, a source of infection as a possible causal factor of SIRS could not be determined.