Sepsis claims more lives each year in the U.S than any single type of cancer. This life threatening response to infection can lead to tissue damage, organ failure, and death. A new CMS Innovation grant https://innovation.cms.gov has provided funds to the Great Plains Quality Innovation Network (QIN) http://greatplainsqin.org.
The funding will be used to increase awareness and early recognition of sepsis in order to provide real-time decision support in four states to include Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
The Great Plains QIN then selected Redivus Health https://redivus.com as a technology partner to assist in rural communities with plans to deploy the Redivus mobile technology platform to identify early sepsis. The symptoms are often attributed to other diagnoses which contributes to delaying treatment.
For the next two years, the Great Plains QIN team will work with rural healthcare teams and communities to provide evidence-based tools like the Redivus health mobile app as well as provide training and access to sepsis experts.
“We are happy to be partnering on this research project”, said Jeff Dunn Redivus Health, Founder and CEO. “Out mobile app in the hands of first responders has tremendous potential to reduce the progression of sepsis by catching the signs early so patients can get life-saving treatment sooner.”
Hannah Schoendaler, Director of Nursing and Amanda Volchko, Physician Assistant at the Sheridan County Hospital www.sheridancountyhospital.com in Hoxie Kansas, are both using the Redivus Health app with patients. The app is making it possible to diagnose sepsis and then act quickly. As reported, “Very often, sepsis is under diagnose and even if negative screens appear, the Redivus app will help hospital staff and providers pick up on more sepsis cases.”
Today, the Sheridan County Hospital staff and providers all have the app on their phones so they can quickly screen patients for sepsis and share this critical information with others. Using the app has even been incorporated into daily rounds as a safety check to make sure all potential sepsis cases are reviewed.
In addition, part of the research study will also be about building a case to demonstrate how this type of sepsis awareness program could be scaled to the national level and be the model for the rest of the country to follow.