Research
Severe sepsis: variation in resource and therapeutic modality use among academic centers
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* Corresponding author: David W Bates dbates@partners.org
1 Research Fellow, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Partners HealthCare System, Wellesley, Massachusetts, USA
2 Associate Medical Director, Finger Lakes Blue Cross Blue Shield, Rochester, New York, USA
3 VP and Medical Director, Healthcare Quality, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
4 L. Davis Institute, University of Pennsylvania Health System, Philadelphia, USA
5 Director, Clinical Research Institute, Tufts-New England Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
6 Professor of Medicine, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, New York, USA
7 Professor of Medicine, Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA
8 Professor of Medicine, UCLA, Department of Medicine, Division of GIM and HSR, Los Angeles, California, USA
9 Chief, Geographic Medicine and Infectious Diseases and Hospital Epidemiologist, Tufts-New England Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
10 Infectious Diseases Section Staff, Infectious Disease, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, New Hampshire, USA
11 Professor, Medicine and Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
12 Interim Director, Ambulatory Care and Prevention, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
13 Chief, General Medicine Division, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Critical Care 2003, 7:R24-R34 doi:10.1186/cc2171
Published: 17 March 2003Abstract
Background
Treatment of severe sepsis is expensive, often encompassing a number of discretionary modalities. The objective of the present study was to assess intercenter variation in resource and therapeutic modality use in patients with severe sepsis.
Methods
We conducted a prospective cohort study of 1028 adult admissions with severe sepsis from a stratified random sample of patients admitted to eight academic tertiary care centers. The main outcome measures were length of stay (LOS; total LOS and LOS after onset of severe sepsis) and total hospital charges.
Results
The adjusted mean total hospital charges varied from $69 429 to US$237 898 across centers, whereas the adjusted LOS after onset varied from 15.9 days to 24.2 days per admission. Treatments used frequently after the first onset of sepsis among patients with severe sepsis were pulmonary artery catheters (19.4%), ventilator support (21.8%), pressor support (45.8%) and albumin infusion (14.4%). Pulmonary artery catheter use, ventilator support and albumin infusion had moderate variation profiles, varying 3.2-fold to 4.9-fold, whereas the rate of pressor support varied only 1.92-fold across centers. Even after adjusting for age, sex, Charlson comorbidity score, discharge diagnosis-relative group weight, organ dysfunction and service at onset, the odds for using these therapeutic modalities still varied significantly across centers. Failure to start antibiotics within 24 hours was strongly correlated with a higher probability of 28-day mortality (r2 = 0.72).
Conclusion
These data demonstrate moderate but significant variation in resource use and use of technologies in treatment of severe sepsis among academic centers. Delay in antibiotic therapy was associated with worse outcome at the center level.