Emergency Department Crowding Is Associated With Delayed Antibiotics for Sepsis

[Consensus document for sepsis code implementation and development in the Community of Madrid]

The consensus paper for the implementation and development of the sepsis code, finished in April 2017 is presented here. It was adopted by the Regional Office of Health as a working document for the implementation of the sepsis code in the Community of Madrid, both in the hospital setting (acute, middle and long-stay hospitals) and in Primary Care and Out-of-Hospital Emergency Services. It is now published without changes with respect to the original version, having only added the most significant bibliographical references. The document is divided into four parts: introduction, initial detection and assessment, early therapy and organizational recommendations. In the second to fourth sections, 25 statements or proposals have been included, agreed upon by the authors after several face-to-face meetings and an extensive "online" discussion. The annex includes nine tables that are intended as a practical guide to the activation of the sepsis code. Both the content of the recommendations and their formal writing have been made taking into account their applicability in all areas to which they are directed, which may have very different structural and functional characteristics and features, so that we have deliberately avoided a greater degree of concretion: the objective is not that the sepsis code is organized and applied identically in all of them, but that the health resources work in a coordinated manner aligned in the same direction.