Geographic Clusters in Sepsis Hospital Mortality and the Role of Targeted Regionalization
Authors' conclusion
In a simulation study, targeted sepsis regionalization appears less effective than local performance improvement in reducing preventable sepsis deaths.
Study context
- Population
- Age-qualifying Medicare beneficiaries with sepsis, 2013 to 2015222 regional clusters
- Participants
- 1,125,308 beneficiaries
- Exposure
- Simulated reallocation of sepsis patients to higher-performing hospitals within the same cluster vs local performance improvement
- Outcome
- Predicted deaths prevented per year in the US
Methodological detailsadministrative claims data, geospatial clustering, simulation
- Administrative claims data
- Geospatial clustering
- Simulation
Main finding
As reported in the abstract
Reassigning cases from lowest- to highest-performing hospital in a cluster (most impactful regionalization strategy)
1705
Reducing mortality by 1% absolute in hospitals in the lower half of the performance distribution
5702
Observational data: associations, not effects.
Further findings
Characteristics of high-performing clusters
- High-performing clusters largely in the Midwest, in less urban regions with smaller hospitals
Parts of this Brief are withheld: the automatic checks could not confirm them against the abstract.
Original publication
Geographic Clusters in Sepsis Hospital Mortality and the Role of Targeted Regionalization. Crit Care Med. Published 24 April 2025. doi:10.
Composed by AI from the published abstract and checked against it. How Briefs are made →