Mandatory sepsis protocols at New York hospitals saved over 16,000 lives

Editor's Note

According to the New York State Department of Health, the establishment of mandatory sepsis protocols at all New York state hospitals is “estimated to have saved more than 16,000 lives between 2015 and 2019,” HealthLeaders April 26 reports.

“Sepsis is the leading cause of in-hospital death” in the US, HealthLeaders noted. In 2012, a 12-year-old boy named Rory Staunton died due to undiagnosed and untreated sepsis in a New York City hospital. After the incident, starting in 2013, New York state hospitals began having to report sepsis-related data to the state’s Department of Health in newly established sepsis protocols, also known as Rory's Regulations.

“The mandatory sepsis protocols are intended to improve rapid identification and treatment of sepsis,” HealthLeaders highlighted. Since the protocol’s implementation, “an estimated 16,011 New York State lives [were] saved from 2015 to the end of 2019, which is the most current year of validated data available," Jeffrey Hammond, deputy director of communications at the New York State Department of Health, told HealthLeaders.

Rory's Regulations have the following five primary requirements for hospitals to adopt sepsis protocols, as listed in the article:

1. There must be a process for screening and early recognition of patients with sepsis, severe sepsis, and septic shock.
2. There must be a process to identify and document patients for treatment with protocols for severe sepsis and septic shock.
3. There must be treatment guidelines, including early administration of antibiotics.
4. There must be training for healthcare providers to quickly recognize and treat sepsis in adults and children.
5. There must be reporting of sepsis-related data to the New York State Department of Health. The data is used to develop and evaluate risk-adjusted mortality rates.

Access the HealthLeaders story below for more information on establishing, implementing, and analyzing post-implementation data of sepsis protocols.