Dr. Frank Sebat, MD, FCCM

Dr. Frank Sebat graduated from Northwestern School of Medicine, completed his residency in Internal Medicine and Fellowship in Critical Care at University of Southern California Los Angeles County Medical Center. He practiced Internal Medicine and Critical Care for 42 years in Northern California while developing educational programs and systems of care to empower frontline clinicians to recognize early subtle deterioration in patient’s physiology – the key to prompt mobilization of appropriate resources to improve outcomes. He and his team developed a 240 Hr. Nursing Critical Care Education program that was widely recognized in advancing the bedside practice of Critical Care in Northern California

He is a Fellow of the American College of Critical Care Medicine and was (2010) co-chair of Society of Critical Care Medicine’s Rapid Response Team Task Force. While practicing critical care he was Medical Director of Intensive care, Critical Care and Cardiovascular Intensive care and Rapid Response System at Redding Medical Center, Rideout Fremont Medical Center (Marysville Ca) and Kaweah Delta Medical center (Visalia Ca) respectively. He is currently co-chair of Society of Critical Care Medicine and the American College of Critical Care Medicine task force on creating and publishing guidelines for acute care hospitals on “Earlier Recognition and Treatment of Critical Illness Outside the ICU.”

Dr Sebat is currently the Director Kritikus Foundation and faculty for the Internal Medicine section of the Family Practice program at Mercy Medical Center Redding Ca. He has published, lectured and consulted nationally on the early recognition and treatment of critical illness and, with his colleagues, have developed and implemented programs to improve the care of these patients within the prehospital and hospital settings. He brings an emphasis to “back to basics” in training health care professionals to recognize earlier and rapidly treat at-risk patients. His approach has dramatically decreased mortality in patients with both septic, hypovolemic shock and acute respiratory failure by developing a complete system of care for these patients, predicated on keeping it simple and execution. He refers to this as the Vince Lombardi (former coach of Green Bay Packers football team) approach to critical care by focusing on the basic “blocking and tackling” patient issues which if overlooked or minimized in favor of “razzle dazzle” assessments and interventions lead to worse outcomes.

He has been in leadership roles for the Society of Critical Care Medicine regarding Rapid Response Systems (RRS) and a recognized authority in improving RRS and published a comprehensive manual with the Society of Critical Care Medicine on best practice of designing, implementing and enhancing a RRS in hospitals. Dr. Sebat was the first investigator (1999) to develop a complete four-arm RRS with focus on the afferent arm or bedside nurse with an expanded set of bedside vital signs (The 10 Signs of Vitality – 10 SOV) to recognize earlier at-risk floor patients. His study published in 2005 demonstrated the feasibility and effectiveness of a four arm RRS to treat patients in shock in the pre-hospital and community hospital setting. His 2007 RRS study demonstrated a reduction in septic shock mortality from 50% to 10%, and hypovolemic shock from 40% to 11% over five years while doubling the identification of these patients and decreasing the time to recognition from 49 minutes to 17 minutes.  “The data collection system and analysis of Dr. Sebat’s previous work is some of the most meticulous and careful work done in the field of RRSs”. (Dr. Geoffrey Lighthall, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA).

Dr. Sebat is continuing his work with a recent publication on the significant value of peripheral capillary refill > 3 sec on predicting acute patient decline. He is currently studying the sensitivity and specificity of the 10-SOV bedside Early Warning Assessments to assist clinicians in early recognition of patient deterioration; and continues to educate clinicians through publications, lectures and implementation of hospital specific programs in the early detection and best practice treatment of at-risk hospitalized patients to reduce morbidity, mortality and cost.