Grantee Name
HCA Education and Research / dba Home Care Association of New York State
Funding Area
Special Projects Fund
Publication Date
April 2021
Grant Amount
$149,749
Grant Date:
September 2017 - October 2018
Sepsis is an overwhelming, swift, debilitating, and deadly bodily response to infection.
In New York State, approximately 50,000 patients are diagnosed with severe sepsis or septic shock each year; of those, 30% of adults and 9% of children die in the hospital from sepsis. Although more than 80% of sepsis cases originate outside of the hospital, no home or community sepsis screening and intervention system had existed in the United States prior to 2015. Patients in home care are at particular risk for sepsis, and the condition often goes unnoticed until it becomes life-threatening.
To address this issue, the Home Care Association of New York State (HCA) in 2015 created a sepsis screening and intervention tool with a team of sepsis medical experts for application in home care settings. Simultaneously, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services initiated a large regional pilot of a sepsis screening tool in the Capital District and Central New York regions, which incorporated the HCA sepsis tool and was subsequently endorsed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. NYHealth awarded HCA a grant to expand the screening tool to all home care agencies in the State.