King’s Daughters Medical Center in Brookhaven is one of two Mississippi hospitals chosen to participate in a pilot program to improve sepsis testing accuracy.

MHA Solutions and Healthcare Providers Insurance (HPIC) are collaborating with Magnolia Medical Technologies to further increase patient safety and improve outcomes across the state of Mississippi.

This new relationship provides educational resources and programs to all Mississippi Hospital Association (MHA) members on best practices in blood culture collection and the role of solutions, including Steripath, in virtually eliminating blood culture contamination at the source.

Two MHA member hospitals – KDMC and Neshoba General Hospital in Philadelphia – have been selected to participate in an HPIC-sponsored pilot program to demonstrate the impact of Steripath on reducing blood culture contamination. The goal of the pilot is to establish a standardized blood culture collection and contamination prevention model that may be followed by other MHA members, improving testing accuracy for bloodstream infections, like sepsis, and preventing unnecessary, avoidable health risks and harm to the residents of Mississippi that may stem from a misdiagnosis.

“KDMC is excited about being selected as one of two hospitals selected by MHA Solutions and HPIC to pilot the Steripath Specimen Diversion application expected to drastically improve the collection of blood cultures accurately,” said Cheri Hess Brooks KDMC’s chief nursing officer. “It is a common problem for skin cells to be collected with a blood specimen, which can cause a ‘false positive’ result indicating an infection that is not actually there.

“The Steripath collection procedure eliminates most of the errors, thus saving patients from over medication of antibiotics and extras days of hospitalization. Both our laboratory staff and nursing staff are just beginning to learn the new process and we are particularly excited on behalf of our patients to do something new and highly effective to manage patients’ care effectively, safely, and with fewer days of hospitalization. We look forward to the pilot program and have begun staff education this month.”

Magnolia Medical Technologies is a Seattle-based medical technology company that develops and markets innovative blood culture collection devices that improve the accuracy and predictability of diagnostic test results for sepsis. Its Steripath Initial Specimen Diversion Device is the only FDA 510(k)-cleared device platform indicated to reduce blood culture contamination for sepsis testing.

“The goal of MHA Solutions is to provide the best products and services possible for our members and clients,” said Eddie Foster, president and CEO of MHA Solutions. “Steripath, with its clinically proven results, aligns with our goal. We are excited to join Magnolia Medical in advancing to a higher standard of care for sepsis diagnostic accuracy by providing new technology solutions and practice change to our members that can prevent patient harm due to false-positive blood cultures. We look forward to sharing the results of the HPIC-sponsored Steripath pilot with our membership of over 100 hospitals.”

MHA Solutions and Magnolia Medical will also be sponsoring roundtable discussions with executives from MHA member hospitals on the national movement to a 1 percent blood culture contamination rate from the current national average benchmark of 3 percent.

Blood culture is the gold standard for detecting bloodstream infections, including sepsis. An estimated 58 million are performed each year. A reduction in blood culture contamination from 3 percent to 1 percent equates to approximately 1.2 million fewer patients impacted by a potential misdiagnosis of sepsis.