Effectiveness and Safety of an Emergency Department Code Sepsis Protocol: A Pragmatic Clinical Trial.

Abstract

Sepsis care delivery - including initiation of prompt, appropriate antimicrobials - remains suboptimal. Determine direct and off-target effects of emergency department (ED) sepsis care reorganization. This pragmatic pilot trial enrolled adult patients presenting November 2019 to February 2021 to an ED in Utah before and after implementation of a multimodal, team-based "Code Sepsis" protocol. Patients presenting to two other EDs where usual care was continued served as contemporaneous controls. The primary outcome was door-to-antimicrobial time among patients meeting Sepsis-3 criteria before ED departure. Secondary and safety outcomes included all-cause 30-day mortality, antimicrobial utilization and overtreatment, and antimicrobial-associated adverse events. Multivariable regression analyses employed difference-in-differences methods to account for trends in outcomes unrelated to the studied intervention. Code Sepsis protocol activation (N=307) exhibited 8.5% sensitivity and 66% positive predictive value for patients meeting sepsis criteria before ED departure. Among 10,151 patients meeting sepsis criteria during the study, adjusted difference-in-differences analysis demonstrated a 13-minute (95% CI 7-19-minute) decrease in door-to-antimicrobial time associated with Code Sepsis implementation (p<0.001). Mortality and clinical safety outcomes were unchanged, but Code Sepsis implementation was associated with increased false-positive presumptive infection diagnosis among patients meeting sepsis criteria in the ED and increased antimicrobial utilization. Implementation of a team-based protocol for rapid sepsis evaluation and treatment during the COVID-19 pandemic's first year was associated with decreased ED door-to-antimicrobial time but also increased antimicrobial utilization. Measurement of both patient-centered and off-target effects of sepsis care improvement interventions is essential to comprehensive assessment of their value. ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT04148989) This article is open access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives License 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).