In this study, our group at Intermountain led by Terry Clemmer demonstrated that careful rollout of an intensive quality improvement effort to improve the care of patients with life-threatening infection led to dramatic improvements in care and in outcomes for patients. We saw a dramatic improvement in survival in association with this effort.

The Journal of Critical Care has published our initial evaluation of fractal exponents (the scaling coefficients from detrended fluctuation analysis) of heart rate variability in early sepsis and septic shock. In this study, we found that loss of fractal complexity in the time between successive heart beats was associated with poor response to initial resuscitation among patients arriving in the ICU with life-threatening infection.

Ellie Hirshberg is leading a collaboration with Jorie Butler to validate the HEALTHII value persona instrument psychometrically. The Intermountain Research and Medical Foundation has provided the initial funding for the project, which is an important early step in the progress of our Humanizing the Experience of Acute Life-THreatening Illness and Injury (HEALTHII) project.