Sponsors (8)
Official title: To establish programs to reduce rates of sepsis.
Introduced January 15, 2026 by Donald Norcross · Last progress January 15, 2026
The bill aims to reduce sepsis deaths and improve pediatric tracking through federal research, CDC-backed implementation, and public reporting—but does so at the cost of modest new federal spending and added administrative, training, and data/IT burdens for hospitals and health systems.
Patients (including children) and hospitals: Promoting proven sepsis protocols plus a CDC program to spread best practices is likely to reduce preventable sepsis deaths and complications by enabling earlier recognition and treatment.
Researchers, clinicians, and children: Increases federal focus on sepsis research (including pediatric research at NICHD) and improves pediatric sepsis data and outcome measures, supporting better-targeted prevention, treatments, and tracking for children.
Hospitals and taxpayers: Emphasizing prevention and early recognition of sepsis could reduce costly readmissions and complications, lowering downstream healthcare costs for hospitals and the broader health system.
Hospitals and providers: Implementing new protocols, training staff, changing processes, and meeting reporting expectations will impose administrative and operational costs on hospitals and frontline clinicians.
Taxpayers: The bill creates or implies new federal spending (including a $20M/year CDC program and expanded research support), increasing budgetary outlays and longer-term fiscal commitments.
Hospitals, state partners, and patients: Expanded data sharing and updated interoperability/data elements may raise data governance, privacy concerns, and implementation costs for health IT systems.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Authorizes a CDC sepsis team to run education, improve pediatric data, coordinate sepsis data standards and outcome measures with CMS/HHS, create a voluntary hospital honor roll, and funds $20M/year (2026–2030).
Creates a CDC-led sepsis program to improve prevention, diagnosis, data, and hospital quality measures and funds those activities. The bill requires the CDC Director to maintain a sepsis team, run an education campaign on hospital best practices, improve pediatric sepsis data, coordinate sepsis data standards across HHS, develop outcome measures with CMS, create an optional hospital recognition "honor roll," and report to Congress. It authorizes $20 million per year for fiscal years 2026–2030 to carry out these activities.