The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention added a new diagnostic code to the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) list that will help home care providers better care for patients who were hospitalized for sepsis.
The added code, z51A, alerts home care and other post-acute care providers when a patient is discharged from a sepsis-related hospitalization. Since sepsis is an acute care condition that is treated and resolved in hospitals, home care providers are not able to properly record when it occurs among their patients. As a result, sepsis is only noted on home care admission assessments about 7% of the time, which can heighten patients’ risk of being readmitted to the hospital, according to VNS Health, a nonprofit home health provider in New York
“Clearly, this is a population that needs close monitoring after discharge,” Kathryn Bowles, PhD, director of VNS Health’s center for home care policy and research, said recently in a statement.
In 2020, VNS Health completed a study that found that sepsis survivors have a roughly 20% chance of being rehospitalized within 30 days of discharge, and a 30% rate of readmission overall. Up to one-half of these readmissions are the result of sepsis recurring, and sepsis also ranks among the top risk factors for one-year mortality among patients who have already survived sepsis, the study found.
To better treat this at-risk group, VNS Health conducted a pilot program that involves encouraging hospitals to record sepsis diagnoses in patients’ discharge notes. The program has generated a 78% success rate for improved sepsis communication between hospitals and VNS Health.
The development of the new ICD-10 code was informed by VNS Health’s findings, the provider noted in a statement Monday. The code officially took effect Oct. 1.
“Our work has shown that timely attention by home care and outpatient clinicians is highly effective for sepsis survivors,” Bowles said Monday. “It is critically important to communicate sepsis survivorship across transitions in care because among those readmitted from home health care, one-third occur in the first seven days. We are hopeful this new ICD code will direct the necessary attention to sepsis survivors and improve outcomes for the 1.7 million Americans who encounter sepsis each year.”
