News: Hospitals shouldn’t implement one-hour sepsis bundles, SCCM and ACEP say

The Society for Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) and the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) released a joint statement advising against implementation of the one-hour sepsis bundle originally advocated in spring 2018 by committee members of the Surviving Sepsis Campaign (SSC), PulmCCM reported.

In the statement, SCCM and ACEP acknowledged “concerns expressed” about the  “hour-1 bundle” and referenced a large backlash to the guideline—an online petition to retract the guidelines has received more than 6,000 signatures from providers worldwide.

The pushback was largely based on three things:

• The lack of supportive evidence for the one-hour cut off;
• The possibility that the one-hour bundle could lead to indiscriminate antibiotic use and distort operations and care in wasteful and potentially harmful ways; and
• The perceived presumption of SSC’s unilateral move to dictate healthcare policy and the behavior of thousands of physicians, without adequate basis.

The SSC is a collaboration between SCCM and its European counterpart, so SCCM advise to delay implementation is surprising. The societies planned a meeting to discuss things further, but haven’t issued additional statements since, according to PulmCCM.

Editor’s note: To read PulmCCM’s coverage of this story, click here. To read more about the SSC and its most recent updates, click here.