Reduced Mortality

Increasingly, high-functioning healthcare organizations are recognizing the challenge of sustaining results following successful clinical improvement initiatives. Sepsis is a major driver of mortality in the U.S. In fact, it is estimated that up to half of all hospital deaths are linked to sepsis. After executing a successful strategy to improve outcomes for patients with sepsis, Piedmont Healthcare was determined to sustain those critical reductions in mortality, length of stay, and cost.
The health system “hardwired” process changes into the EHR, monitored performance compliance via a well-developed analytics application, and fostered strong leadership on the frontlines to champion a culture of continuous improvement. In the second year of its latest sepsis improvement effort, Piedmont was able to not only sustain, but also to further improve upon its first-year improvement results.
Second-year results:

14.2 percent reduction in mortality for severe sepsis and septic shock translating to 68 lives saved in one year.
30.7 percent improvement in number of patients receiving calculated fluid target.
$1.2 million saved in one year from decreased variable cost.

One hundred thirty-three million Americans, 45 percent of the population, have at least one chronic disease. Chronic diseases are responsible for 7 of 10 deaths each year, killing more than 1.7 million Americans annually. Moreover, chronic disease accounts for 86 percent of our nation’s healthcare costs.
An integrated delivery system and an accountable care organization with two large academic medical centers and six community hospitals, Partners HealthCare is increasingly compensated for outcomes of care. Recognizing the need to more effectively manage its chronically ill patients, Partners implemented an integrated care management program (iCMP) to improve the outcomes of rising-risk patients and better manage treatment costs. The iCMP is a primary-care embedded, longitudinal care management program led by a nurse care manager working collaboratively with the primary care provider and care team.
The iCMP is contributing to Partners effective management of patients and financial success in at-risk contracts. In its Pilot Phase as a Medicare Demonstration Project, the program achieved the following results:

20 percent lower hospitalization rate per 1,000 patients.
13 percent lower rates of emergency department (ED) utilization.
25 percent relative difference in mortality.

Tracing its roots back nearly 120 years, Mission Health has a vision to provide world-class care to western North Carolina and beyond—even as the entire healthcare profession experiences a disruptive upheaval. Mission determined to meet these external changes by making a big change of its own: embracing a culture of continuous improvement.
Mission subsequently engaged physicians and other clinicians to increase process improvement skills, while expanding access to meaningful data via an analytics platform from Health Catalyst.
Results:

20 percent improvement in compliance with severe sepsis; 32 percent reduction in mortality rates; 58 percent increase in sepsis detection.
7 percent reduction in LOS for bowel surgery patients.
34 percent improvement in heart failure LVEF assessment rates.
20 percent increase in “on time” starts as result of OR dashboard.

With the advent of analytics, hospitals have new access to high quality, reliable data. In turn, this can fuel any number of outcomes improvement projects, but hospitals have finite resources to expend on these initiatives. A process is needed to identify which ones will deliver the highest value and best align with the hospital’s overarching priorities.
To balance the demand for analytics support of improvement projects Mission Health designed a prioritization tool that has helped them identify the right projects to approve–while keeping stakeholders more engaged than ever in improving outcomes for patients.
To date, 80 percent of 55 approved projects have met or exceeded their initial targets. Actual realized targets include:

32 percent reduction in sepsis mortality
20 percent improved compliance with the sepsis care process
7 percent reduction in LOS for bowel surgery patients

Up to 50 percent of all hospital deaths in the United States are linked to sepsis. That sepsis mortality statistic was not lost on Piedmont Healthcare, a system of six hospitals and more than 100 physician and specialist offices across greater Atlanta and North Georgia. Sepsis accounted for half of Piedmont’s mortality rate, despite years of progress in sepsis care.
Piedmont leaders recognized that they needed an innovative quality improvement methodology to spread best practices and sustain improvement, supported by an accessible source of timely, reliable, and actionable information. They therefore implemented a “core and spread” team structure to promote enterprise-wide adoption of best practices. The health system also deployed a sepsis prevention analytics application to deliver performance insight to all levels of the organization, and discovered a high correlation between better patient and financial outcomes and the number of bundle elements the patient received.  Being able to tie outcomes to interventions, along with the incorporation of nurse driven protocols, resulted in sustained practice change and greater engagement from physicians, nursing and frontline staff, all the way to the Board level.
As a result, Piedmont achieved the following impressive outcomes:

5.8 percent reduction in mortality for all patients with severe sepsis and septic shock, translating to 26 lives saved in one year.
2.5 percent reduction in total inpatient length of stay (LOS).
8.2 percent reduction in variable cost per case, equating to $4.3 million saved in one year.

The consequences of poor-quality surgical care are significant for both hospitals and patients. Consider the following: One in four patients having a colon re-section is readmitted within 90 days, costing U.S. healthcare approximately $300 million a year and negatively affecting the lives of tens of thousands of patients and their families.
In 2013, Mission Health, North Carolina’s sixth-largest health system, identified opportunities to improve clinical outcomes for its bowel surgery patients. With a vision of achieving the best outcome for each patient, Mission set goals to reduce length of stay (LOS), decrease readmissions, and reduce surgical site infections (SSIs) for its bowel surgery patients.
Mission recognized that care process models (CPMs) were key to making it easier for clinicians to deliver the best care to patients by doing the right thing consistently. The health system therefore organized a multidisciplinary improvement team charged with developing and implementing an evidence-based CPM for bowel surgery. In support of this effort, Mission leveraged technology and analytics to encourage clinician adoption of the CPM and to deliver performance insights.
Through these efforts, Mission has achieved impressive improvements in bowel surgery care:

92 percent reduction in colorectal surgery SSI rates
28.5 percent reduction in mortality
10.6 percent reduction in 30-day readmissions
4.4 percent reduction in LOS
8.5 percent reduction in cost per case

Stroke is a leading cause of hospitalizations among elderly often resulting in serious long-term disability, readmissions (up to 27% are readmitted to the hospital in year one), or secondary stroke. Allina Health’s Courage Kenny Rehabilitation Institute (CKRI) had deployed a successful care coordination model for other complicated, high-risk populations that it was confident would help stroke patients, as well.
CKRI created a holistic program for stroke patients that delivers comprehensive, seamless care across inpatient, outpatient and support services. A data warehouse and analytics platform merges data across the care continuum, and enables Allina to target high-risk stroke patients for coordinated care, track their progress and measure their outcomes.
Within a year, Allina was able to prove the value of this new care model for stroke by realizing $350,000 in cost savings and, most importantly, through actual lives saved and improved.

Every year, severe sepsis impacts more than 1 million Americans, and an estimated 25 percent die from the condition. Thibodaux Regional Medical Center is committed to driving and keeping its sepsis mortality rate to less than have the national average. How is this health system achieving these outcomes? Thibodaux formed a sepsis improvement team charged with reducing sepsis mortality and lowering costs while improving the patient experience. The team implemented best-practice care protocols, an analytics system, and an adoption approach that engaged clinicians using education and data. Backed by executive leadership and guided by clear goals, the sepsis improvement initiative has achieved impressive results in just six months that include a decrease in sepsis mortality rate to half of the national average, a 3 percent reduction in average variable cost, a reduction in LOS in the ICU by one day, and a 7 percent improvement in patient satisfaction.

MultiCare Health System, an IDS serving communities throughout Washington State, recently undertook an initiative to improve the care of, cost of, and experience for pneumonia patients. This initiative included the building of evidenced-based order sets (and driving their adoption), assigning a team of social workers called “personal health partners” to research and improve patient follow-up and communication, and deploying an analytics application to provide near real-time feedback on compliance and performance while offering a single view of patient-specific data across multiple visits and care settings, such as medication and readmission histories. Through these efforts, MultiCare has realized significant outcome improvements including reducing pneumonia readmissions by 23 percent, a 28 percent reduction in mortality rate, a 2 percent decrease in LOS, and a 6.4 percent reduction in average variable cost per patient.

MultiCare, an integrated delivery system (IDS) in the Pacific Northwest, has established a Clinically Integrated Network (CIN) to serve as a model for value creation that benefits patients, providers, and payers. However, to create a truly integrated network, MultiCare needed to build a system of collaboratives—multidisciplinary, clinically focused teams charged with developing clinical care standards and pathways and then collaborating with operations to get them implemented across the enterprise—to improve outcomes in a growing range of clinical domains including Critical Care, Women’s, Surgery, Medicine, Cardiac, and Pediatric. The outcomes of this collaborative care include a 65 percent reduction in sepsis mortality rate, a 75 percent reduction in time required to approve system-wide care guidelines, and a significant contribution to a system-wide cost savings trajectory of more than $100 million over the last three years.

Sepsis, a serious complication that strikes quickly and is often fatal, is the single most expensive condition to treat in the hospital, in part because of the longer than average stay. To reduce sepsis mortality rates, which are between 20 and 50 percent, many hospitals have established evidence based bundles comprised of antibiotic administration, lactate level monitoring and other elements of care. However, without analytics, hospitals rely on manual processes to track sepsis rates and bundle compliance. Learn how Mission Health has streamlined surveillance by 75% while experiencing a 2.6% reduction in sepsis mortality rates and an 18% reduction in length of hospital stay.