The Health division of Wolters Kluwer, a global provider of information and point of care solutions for the healthcare industry, has partnered with Halifax Health to improve sepsis outcomes by integrating POC Advisor™ into clinical workflows. A cloud-based, integrated decision support platform, POC Advisor detects and electronically alerts clinicians to potentially septic patients, combining mobile alerts and patient-specific advice with change management and standardised sepsis protocols to accelerate diagnosis and appropriate treatment.
Sepsis is the body's overwhelming and often fatal immune response to infection. In the US, it is the deadliest condition treated in hospital critical care units, claiming approximately 258,000 lives annually, and is the most expensive to treat, costing hospitals an estimated $20 billion every year.
Using automated, real-time surveillance, POC Advisor aggregates, normalises and analyses patient data from disparate clinical systems to deliver timely and accurate sepsis alerts and advice. Hundreds of rules built into the platform account for possible comorbidities and medication abnormalities, ensuring that alerts are both highly sensitive and specific. In a 2014 pilot study at Huntsville Hospital, a 941-bed facility in Alabama, integration of POC Advisor resulted in a 53% reduction in sepsis mortality and a 30% drop in sepsis-related 30-day readmissions.
The partnership also marks the inaugural deployment of POC Advisor into the emergency department (ED). It is an area of critical importance for Halifax Health, Florida's largest ED, with more than 116,000 emergency visits annually.
East Central Florida's largest healthcare provider, the Halifax Health system comprises a 678-bed tertiary and community hospital and more than 500 physicians representing 54 medical specialties. It is consistently ranked in the top 5% of all hospitals in the nation for clinical outcomes for trauma, pediatric emergency, cardiology, orthopaedics, neurosciences, oncology, neonatal and pediatric intensive care.
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