HMS held its first co-sponsored Collaborative Wide Meeting with the Michigan Emergency Department Improvement Collaborative (MEDIC) on November 1, 2023 at UM Flint Riverfront Expo Center in Flint, Michigan. The purpose of this co-sponsored meeting was to discuss opportunities to improve patient outcomes and identify areas of bi-directional learning to enhance early identification and treatment of patients with sepsis. This meeting also featured a co-hosted poster presentation session which was an opportunity for sites from both collaboratives to showcase the work they have accomplished and to assist with ideas for patient safety improvements at other sites. A total of 28 posters were featured during this session representing many different hospitals and health systems.
The day started with each collaborative having separate sessions to review the current state of data and initiatives for their respective collaboratives, and then members from both collaboratives joined for a joint session. This session was introduced by Dr. Keith Kocher, Program Director for MEDIC, who welcomed guests and provided an overview of the MEDIC Collaborative. Dr. Scott Flanders then provided a similar overview of HMS for MEDIC members in the audience. Dr. Hallie Prescott then led a session on Improving Care of Patients with Sepsis to highlight the work being done on the HMS Sepsis Initiative and in the national healthcare space, with particular attention paid to the importance of partnership with Emergency Medicine in improving early identification and treatment of patients with sepsis.
Our expert guest for the meeting was Dr. Arjun Srinivasan (CAPT, USPHS), Deputy Director for Program Improvement at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) who provided updates from the CDC regarding the CDC Core Elements of Hospital Sepsis Programs. Dr. Srinivasan provided an introduction to the Core Elements of Hospital Sepsis Programs, stating that it was modeled after the work done by the CDC in the Core Elements of Antibiotic Stewardship. The primary goal of the Core Elements is to bolster current sepsis programs at hospitals across the nation or assist hospitals in setting up sepsis programs if they are not currently in place. All sites were encouraged to start with the Self-Assessment of their hospital’s sepsis program to see how best they can tailor the Core Elements to work for their institution.
The meeting concluded with an interactive session between HMS and MEDIC members focusing on transitions of care for sepsis patients. The goal of this session was to identify vulnerabilities in the ED to inpatient transition process for patients with sepsis at each institution. Each table (which were seated by hospital system) were asked to complete an activity that identified what their institution does well and could improve upon during transitions of care, brainstorm potential interventions to target barriers and areas for improvement, and discuss collaboratively process breakdowns and how to address them.