Davies Award Deep Dives: Hawai’i Pacific Health Improves Sepsis Care

March 27, 2017

HPH reduces length of stay for sepsis patients and saves 275 lives with Epic

In 2016, Hawai’i Pacific Health received a HIMSS Enterprise Davies Award, becoming the second organization ever to win the Davies award twice. This time around, they were recognized for their work in reducing the length of stay for sepsis patients by nearly 2 days and saving the lives of 275 people who would not have survived their sepsis event without these improvements. According to their case study, order sets and decision support in Epic were key to the program’s success.

While HPH saw early improvements in sepsis outcomes after they made some process changes, “The true improvement occurred after we fully implemented tools in the EHR,” HPH said in their case study. “Full implementation of the order sets and the [decision support] enabled our front line providers to provide the timely evidence-based care that saved the lives of patients with sepsis.”

The sepsis case study was one of three that HPH submitted to HIMSS. In its other two case studies, HPH reduced length of stay for diabetic patients and improved its data warehouse to facilitate population health management.