The ACSQHC has released its five-year roadmap for improving the collection and reporting of data to reduce the burden of sepsis in Australia.
Buckle up, sepsis community.
Last week the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Healthcare released its new National Sepsis Data Plan – Strategic Analysis Report, outlining its vision for the future of sepsis-related data collection and use in Australia with a five-year plan to achieve this.
Australia’s sepsis data collection landscape was described as inconsistent, fragmented and held back by manual data entry processes.
Another limitation of the current approach is that there is little to no patient-reported outcome or experience data collected.
“This gap limits the ability to understand the long-term impacts of sepsis, including post-discharge complications, psychological distress, and quality of life,” the report noted.
However, the nature of these problems means there is a clear-cut list of opportunities to improve sepsis data, “including building consensus on definitions, piloting patient-reported outcome measures, investing in analytical tooling and enabling data linkage”.
The report concluded with the presentation of a five-year National Sepsis Data Strategy, described as a roadmap to realise a future state of sepsis data centred on robust standardised national data.
The new approach will harmonise how sepsis is recorded, coded and reported, and establish the foundation for understanding sepsis prevalence, health system impact and outcomes.
The success of the plan is dependent on inter-jurisdictional commitment, strategic sponsorship and involvement, and ensuring all activities are developed with and informed by people with lived experience of sepsis.
“These foundations will support the implementation of key activities outlined in each of the four strategic pillars: governance, quality and collection, infrastructure and linkage,” the report read.
Relevant stakeholders are ready for change, the report suggested.
“Improving how sepsis data is collected, recorded, stored, managed, shared and used will strengthen clinical practice, quality improvement and research,” it read.
“The progress already being realised at a grassroots level and the willingness of people to participate in the development of this report demonstrates a strong appetite among medical professionals, data scientists, policy analysts, survivors and researchers to work together to drive this long-term change.”
The report also called for the federal government to name a lead agency to oversee and implement the data plan.
“With the appropriate support, this strategy can realise a future of sepsis data that enhances clinical decision making and care, patient safety, quality improvement and health services planning,” it concluded.
“Ultimately this will reduce the burden of sepsis in Australia.”
Unpublished data from the ACSQHC suggests there were more than 80,000 hospitalisations for sepsis in 2022-23, with roughly 15% of these events resulting in a death.
The direct financial cost of sepsis in Australia is estimated at $700 million per year, with indirect costs thought to be more than $4 billion.
The full report is now available online.
