Advancing Care Equity and Sepsis Outcomes: ACESO study
Abstract
Background: Sepsis is the dysfunctional inflammatory and immunological host response to infection and a major cause of avoidable hospital death in Australia.
Aims: The aim of the project is to analyse patient care and improve clinical pratice of patients presenting to Emergency departments (ED), at risk of developing sepsis using routinely collected data under the ACESO collaboration.
Methods: Data was extracted from the Western Sydney Local Health District eMR. Multi-disciplinary teams processed and analysed the data to inform current practice, interventions, benchmark care and the development of new clinical decision support tools to provide feedback to the participating hospitals.
Results: The study period, 1st of January 2017 till the 30th of November 2019, registered ~480k presentations (aged > 16), originating at any ED within WSLHD.
Only 3873 (0.8%) had an ED documented diagnosis of sepsis while 21 % (n = 102,663) were categorised as suspected infection and 6 % (n = 27,408) as suspected sepsis.
We aim to share the progress on the aims and the function of the collaboration. We have published on the impact that intravenous fluids have on the risk of in-hospital mortality. Uncovered bias in the provision of care in the elderly population (aged ≥ 65) with respect to a younger population (aged < 65) and developed a sepsis screening algorithm for triage to promote timely interventions.
Conclusions: Multiple teams working under a common collaboration have had a positive impact on generating insights associated with patient outcome and clinical practice using a single source of information.
