The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), along with societies for emergency medicine physicians and hospitalists, are again speaking up about the ongoing policy experiment known as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Severe Sepsis/Septic Shock Management Bundle (SEP-1).
SEP-1 is a reportable ‘quality measure’ that dictates precisely how suspected sepsis patients must be managed in the early phases of illness. If clinicians don’t consistently comply, hospitals get “dinged” with public reporting of their supposedly low quality of sepsis care.
The stakes are going up. CMS has added SEP-1 to its “value-based purchasing” program for 2024, meaning hospitals will face financial penalties for noncompliance. If you thought administrators had a bee in their bonnet for SEP-1 before, just wait. That was the pregame.
Compliance is only 50% nationally, mainly because the bundle is excessively burdensome, complex and nit-picky, and also because it’s out of step with good clinical practice…
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