Poor Antibiotic Prescribing Putting Hospital Patients at Risk for Deadly Infections
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sent this bulletin at 03/04/2014 03:41 PM ESTPoor Antibiotic Prescribing Putting Hospital Patients at Risk for Deadly Infections
CDC calls on every hospital to use new checklist to improve prescribing practices
CDC calls on every hospital to use new checklist to improve prescribing practices
A new CDC Vital Signs report reveals that doctors’ prescribing habits for hospital patients vary widely, a signal that improvement is needed. In addition, the report found that one-third of prescriptions for both the common and critical drug vancomycin and for urinary tract infections in hospital patients contained at least one potential error. Patients either weren’t properly evaluated or tested, or the drugs were given for too long. Fortunately, results also show that a 30% reduction in the use of antibiotics that most commonly cause C. difficile infection can reduce these deadly infections by more than 25%.
To improve prescribing practices and reduce patient harm, every hospital should have an antibiotic stewardship program with 7 core elements: leadership commitment, clear accountability, drug expertise, prescribing improvement action, tracking, reporting/feedback, and clinician education. CDC released new tools to assist inpatient facilities with implementing these key stewardship activities.
See CDC’s digital press kit: http://www.cdc.gov/media/DPK/2014/dpk-vs-safer-health-care.html
See CDC Director, Dr. Tom Frieden, on Medscape: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/821135
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