Implementing a clinical decision support system may help identify patients who have been prescribed inappropriate antibiotic therapy for healthcare-associated infections, according to a study in Critical Care Medicine.
Researchers at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis implemented a CDS that identified if an antibiotic order entry was placed for a patient who had exposure to the same class of antibiotics currently being prescribed or had a positive culture with resistance to the prescribed antibiotic within the previous six months. The ordering system reviewed all the antibiotic and microbiologic history for each patient across all BJC HealthCare hospitals upon antibiotic order to retrieve this information.
Of the 3,616 patients in the study, 900 (24.2 percent) generated an alert. Patients who generated an alert and were identified for the above characteristics were more likely to receive inappropriate antibiotic therapy, and 53.1 percent of those who received inappropriate therapy could have received an alternative antibiotic.
Researchers suggest automated alerts could identify critically ill patients who have been inappropriately prescribed antibiotic therapy for HAIs.
More articles on CDS:
Study: Customized CDS alerts better than vendor-supplied solution
Study: CDS improves antibiotic prescribing
5 key elements of an effective CDS system