Operationalising outpatient antimicrobial stewardship to reduce system-wide antibiotics for acute bronchitis.

BACKGROUND: Antibiotics are not recommended for treatment of acute uncomplicated bronchitis (AUB), but are often prescribed (85% of AUB visits within the Veterans Affairs nationally). This quality improvement project aimed to decrease antibiotic prescribing for AUB in community-based outpatient centres from 65% to <32% by April 2020. METHODS: From January to December 2018, community-based outpatient clinics' 6 months' average of prescribed antibiotics for AUB and upper respiratory infections was 63% (667 of 1054) and 64.6% (314 of 486) when reviewing the last 6 months. Seven plan-do-study-act (PDSA) cycles were implemented by an interprofessional antimicrobial stewardship team between January 2019 and March 2020. Balancing measures were a return patient phone call or visit within 4 weeks for the same complaint. Χ2 tests and statistical process control charts using Western Electric rules were used to analyse intervention data. RESULTS: The AUB antibiotic prescribing rate decreased from 64.6% (314 of 486) in the 6 months prior to the intervention to 36.8% (154 of 418) in the final 6 months of the intervention. No change was seen in balancing measures. The largest reduction in antibiotic prescribing was seen after implementation of PDSA 6 in which 14 high prescribers were identified and targeted for individualised reviews of encounters of patients with AUB with an antimicrobial steward. CONCLUSIONS: Operational implementation of successful stewardship interventions is challenging and differs from the traditional implementation study environment. As a nascent outpatient stewardship programme with limited resources and no additional intervention funding, we successfully reduced antibiotic prescribing from 64.6% to 36.8%, a reduction of 43% from baseline. The most success was seen with targeted education of high prescribers.

Perceptions of Integration of the Clinical Pharmacist into the Patient Care Medical Home Model.

INTRODUCTION: The patient-centered medical home (PCMH) model is a multidisciplinary, team-based approach to healthcare that focuses on actively involving the patient in clinical decision making. The Veterans Health Administration (VA), while desiring to be a national leader in the delivery of primary care services, used the principles of the PCMH model to design the patient-aligned care team (PACT). The purpose of this study, was to explore the perception of the PACT members after integration of a clinical pharmacist to the PACT. METHODS: This was a single-center cross-sectional study conducted at an integrated Veterans Health Administration system. We electronically surveyed PACT staff practicing within VA-Tennessee Valley Health Care System as of October 1, 2016 using a modified version of the Medicine Medication Use Processes Matrix (MUPM) containing 19 items on five theoretical grouping of processes (evaluation and management, monitoring, medication review, documentation, and education) and two groupings(clinician satisfaction and access). RESULTS: Ninety-one complete responses were received. Perceptions were positive, with 79% rated as either 4 ("moderate contribution") or 5 ("major contribution"). Individual responses based on discipline, with the exception of the medical support assistant were rated positive, specifically job satisfaction. CONCLUSIONS: This study evaluated the perceptions of clinical pharmacist integration into the PACT model. Respondents perceived clinical pharmacist beneficial.

The effect of reducing maximum shift lengths to 16 hours on internal medicine interns' educational opportunities.

PURPOSE: To evaluate educational experiences of internal medicine interns before and after maximum shift lengths were decreased from 30 hours to 16 hours. METHOD: The authors compared educational experiences of internal medicine interns at Vanderbilt University Medical Center before (2010; 47 interns) and after (2011; 50 interns) duty hours restrictions were implemented in July 2011. The authors compared number of inpatient encounters, breadth of concepts in notes, exposure to five common presenting problems, procedural experience, and attendance at teaching conferences. RESULTS: Following the duty hours restrictions, interns cared for more unique patients (mean 118 versus 140 patients per intern, P = .005) and wrote more history and physicals (mean 73 versus 88, P = .005). Documentation included more total concepts after the 16-hour maximum shift implementation, with a 14% increase for history and physicals (338 versus 387, P < .001) and a 10% increase for progress notes (316 versus 349, P < .001). There was no difference in the median number of selected procedures performed (6 versus 6, P = 0.94). Attendance was higher at the weekly chief resident conference (60% versus 68% of expected attendees, P < .001) but unchanged at morning report conferences (79% versus 78%, P = .49). CONCLUSIONS: Intern clinical exposure did not decrease after implementation of the 16-hour shift length restriction. In fact, interns saw more patients, produced more detailed notes, and attended more conferences following duty hours restrictions.

Detection of blood culture bacterial contamination using natural language processing.

Microbiology results are reported in semi-structured formats and have a high content of useful patient information. We developed and validated a hybrid regular expression and natural language processing solution for processing blood culture microbiology reports. Multi-center Veterans Affairs training and testing data sets were randomly extracted and manually reviewed to determine the culture and sensitivity as well as contamination results. The tool was iteratively developed for both outcomes using a training dataset, and then evaluated on the test dataset to determine antibiotic susceptibility data extraction and contamination detection performance. Our algorithm had a sensitivity of 84.8% and a positive predictive value of 96.0% for mapping the antibiotics and bacteria with appropriate sensitivity findings in the test data. The bacterial contamination detection algorithm had a sensitivity of 83.3% and a positive predictive value of 81.8%.

Using risk management files to identify and address causative factors associated with adverse events in pediatrics.

We report a retrospective analysis of 84 consecutive pediatrics-related internal review files opened by a medical center's risk managers between 1996 and 2001. The aims were to identify common causative factors associated with adverse events/adverse outcomes (AEs) in a Pediatrics Department, then suggest ways to improve care. The main outcome was identification of any patterns of factors that contributed to AEs so that interventions could be designed to address them. Cases were noted to have at least one apparent contributing problem; the most common were with communication (44% of cases), diagnosis and treatment (37%), medication errors (20%), and IV/Central line issues (17%). 45% of files involved a child with an underlying diagnosis putting her/him at high risk for an adverse outcome. All Pediatrics Departments face multiple challenges in assuring consistent quality care. The extent to which the data generalize to other institutions is unknown. However, the data suggest that systematic analysis of aggregated claims files may help identify and drive opportunities for improvement in care.