SEPSIS Act

This section says the Act may be called the Securing Enhanced Programs, Systems, and Initiatives for Sepsis Act, or the SEPSIS Act.

This section lists findings by Congress about sepsis. About 1,700,000 people in the United States are diagnosed with sepsis each year and 350,000 people die from it annually. Congress finds that more federal investment in sepsis research is needed to build on work already supported by the National Institutes of Health, including pediatric-focused research supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. It finds that the infectious disease workforce, which helps reduce the burden of sepsis, needs more support to recruit and keep health care professionals who work on infection prevention and related patient care. It finds that sepsis is one of the most expensive conditions to treat in United States hospitals, with costs increased by frequent readmissions, including 1 in 5 patients readmitted within 30 days of discharge and 1 in 3 readmitted within 180 days. It finds that, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 80 percent of sepsis cases begin outside the hospital, and that most sepsis deaths are preventable with early recognition, diagnosis, and treatment. It finds that New York State's hospital sepsis protocols, called Rory's Regulations after Rory Staunton, who died from preventable, treatable sepsis at age 12, have been shown to save lives through rapid identification and treatment of sepsis. Finally, it finds that providers and public health experts should study Rory's Regulations to find ways to end preventable sepsis deaths nationwide.

This section would add a new section 317W to the Public Health Service Act. It would require the Secretary of Health and Human Services, acting through the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to maintain a sepsis team that would lead an education campaign on best practices for addressing sepsis in hospitals (such as the CDC's Hospital Sepsis Program Core Elements); improve data collection on pediatric sepsis; share information with the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to help develop and carry out sepsis quality measures; update sepsis-related data elements in the United States Core Data for Interoperability, coordinating with other relevant Department of Health and Human Services offices, including the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and the Director of the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology; help the Department develop outcome measures for sepsis; and carry out other sepsis-related activities the Director decides are appropriate. Not later than 1 year after the Act is enacted, the Director would have to submit a report to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions and the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on developing and carrying out outcome measures for sepsis for both adult and pediatric patients, taking into account the social and clinical factors that affect how likely a patient is to develop sepsis. Not later than 1 year after enactment, and every year after that, the Director would have to brief the same two committees on: aggregate hospital-reported data on adoption of sepsis best practices, including the Hospital Sepsis Program Core Elements, using the CDC's hospital sepsis program assessment tool and state sepsis reporting requirements; rates of pediatric sepsis and efforts to reduce it, including how the Core Elements can support those efforts; coordination of sepsis reduction efforts across the Department of Health and Human Services; an evaluation, done in partnership with the Director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, of the Core Elements' impact on quality of care for patients; data sharing from the National Healthcare Safety Network with other Department agencies and offices on sepsis; and a report on the latest sepsis datasets provided by the Director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The section would let the Secretary set up a voluntary program to recognize hospitals that maintain effective sepsis programs or improve their sepsis programs over time, including in the areas of early detection, effective treatment, and overall progress reducing the burden of sepsis. To run that program, the Secretary would have to solicit applications from hospitals and set public benchmarks for selecting hospitals for recognition in each of those areas. The section would authorize $20,000,000 in appropriations for each fiscal year from 2026 through 2030 to carry out this section.