In 2011, the Sepsis Alliance designated September as Sepsis Awareness Month to elevate public understanding of this life-threatening condition.
Three years later, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) formally recognized the month, highlighting the urgent need for awareness: “Despite the fact that sepsis affects more than a million Americans each year and kills up to half of them, a new survey published by Sepsis Alliance found that fewer than half of all Americans have ever even heard of the term ‘sepsis.’”
The contrast is stark: sepsis impacts over a million Americans annually, yet public awareness remains alarmingly low.
Sepsis is a serious condition that happens when the body overreacts to an infection. Instead of just fighting the infection, the immune system sets off a chain reaction throughout the body. This can lead to tissue damage, organ failure, and even death if it isn’t treated quickly.
Without prompt treatment in the first few hours, sepsis can quickly progress to a point where recovery becomes unlikely, and the damage may be irreversible.
The CDC’s concern about low public awareness becomes even more alarming when you look at the numbers:
- Each year, at least 1.7 million adults in the U.S. develop sepsis.
- Nearly 350,000 Americans die annually as a result of sepsis.
- One in three patients who die in a hospital has sepsis.
Despite how common and deadly it is, many people still don’t recognize the signs—or even know what sepsis is.
The overwhelming prevalence of sepsis led to Accuity’s commitment to helping our hospitals and their communities raise sepsis education and awareness. The first step is to look at the difficulties hospitals face in the fight against sepsis. One of the biggest challenges with sepsis is that it’s not always easy to define. The signs can be subtle or overlap with other conditions, which makes it harder for clinicians to recognize and diagnose quickly.
In 2016, an international task force came together to create a clearer, more consistent definition of sepsis. They defined it as “life-threatening organ dysfunction caused by a dysregulated response to infection.”
In simple terms, sepsis happens when the body’s response to an infection spirals out of control and begins damaging its own organs.
The group also clarified the difference between sepsis and septic shock. Septic shock is a more severe form of sepsis, marked by serious problems with circulation, cells, and metabolism that dramatically increase the risk of death.
In other words, while sepsis is already life-threatening, septic shock represents an even more critical stage — with a significantly higher likelihood of mortality.
But this creates a two-fold problem. First, not all physicians adopt new definitions at the same pace. Some may begin using the updated criteria right away, while others continue diagnosing sepsis based on older standards. That inconsistency can lead to confusion in how cases are identified and documented.
Second, when definitions aren’t applied consistently, coding challenges follow. If sepsis isn’t clearly recognized and documented early — or isn’t diagnosed until a patient becomes critically ill — it can create gaps in coding accuracy, severity capture, and overall clinical clarity.
These two problems can cause inconsistencies in billing. To address this issue, clinicians must look at each case holistically, ensuring the clinical documentation relates to the final bill after DRG reconciliation.
Health Information Associates explains: “This [discrepancy] can lead to case denials unless the physician documentation fully describes the severity of the patient’s condition and supports the clinical diagnosis of sepsis. Coders will have to take this into consideration when trying to decide if a query is appropriate. If the documentation is not adequate, a query would not be recommended.”
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Complete & compliant documentation plus accurate coding mean better outcomes.
With the help of an experienced partner like Accuity, the coding and clinical documentation plan for sepsis can be standardized within an organization to alleviate the issues facing hospitals. This way, with all healthcare professionals on the same page, the focus of sepsis can be early diagnosis and treatment.