Designed by Kelly Emrick, DHSc, PhD, MBA

This SEPSIS Screening Tool is designed to function as a seamless, dual-layer safety net that integrates directly into the existing patient portal, ensuring that no potential sepsis case goes unnoticed. Ideally, the health system will deploy this tool primarily as a digital “pre-check” embedded within the patient portal. Twenty-four hours before any scheduled appointment or procedure, patients will receive a prompt to complete this brief assessment at home. If the tool detects high-risk symptoms during this remote screening, it triggers an automatic alert to the nursing triage line, allowing clinicians to intercept the patient and redirect them to the Emergency Department if necessary, rather than having a critically ill patient arrive at an outpatient clinic ill-equipped for acute resuscitation.

For patients entering the system directly through physical entry points such as the Emergency Department, Urgent Care, or surgical admissions, the tool serves as a mandatory “digital triage” at the registration kiosk. Before a patient even takes a seat in the waiting room, they complete the screening on a tablet. A positive result on this tool immediately bypasses standard administrative workflows, alerting the front desk staff to initiate a “Sepsis Alert.” This mechanism effectively eliminates the “waiting room gap,” ensuring that the critical “Golden Hour” for sepsis treatment, including lactate draws and antibiotic administration, begins the moment the patient walks through the door, rather than waiting for a physician’s initial evaluation.