Patients Who Develop Sepsis as Inpatients Are Unlikely to Get Complete Sepsis-Bundle Care

Research on sepsis interventions, often compiled into a bundle, has been focused on patients with community-onset sepsis, rather than hospital-onset sepsis. Key elements of bundled care include blood cultures, repeated lactate testing, intravenous fluids, and antibiotics. In this study, researchers examined use of sepsis bundles at four hospitals in California for more than 6000 patients with community-onset or hospital-onset sepsis.

About one third of patients developed sepsis as inpatients. Forty percent of patients who presented to the emergency department with sepsis received the Early Management Bundle for Severe Sepsis/Septic Shock (SEP-1)–concordant care, in contrast to 12% of patients with hospital-onset sepsis. In the latter group, …