Early Home Health Interventions May Reduce Sepsis Readmission Rates

MartinaMartina Administrator admin
edited September 2019 in Sepsis

Researchers working with the Center for Home Care Policy & Research at the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, and the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, did a study to determine if early home health interventions could lower the number of sepsis-related re-hospitalizations. The findings were published in the August 2019 issue of Medical Care.

The researchers looked at records of over 170,000 severe sepsis or septic shock survivors from across the United States. About 57% were women, most were seniors, and many had other health problems aside from having survived sepsis. Almost half of the study group (44.7%) were visited by a nurse the day they were discharged from the hospital or the day after. They were visited again by a nurse at least once within their first week at home. This was the nursing protocol. Eleven percent of the study group had the doctor-only protocol. This included seeing a doctor once within the week of discharge. Just over 28% received both protocols and over 16% had neither the nursing nor the doctor protocols. At the end of the study, the researchers didn’t see any marked improvement among patients who only saw the nurses or only the doctor. However, the group that was part of both protocols, seeing a nurse and a doctor, saw a drop in hospital readmissions, by 7 percentage points.

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