Using Electronically Derived Automated Reports of Appropriate Antibiotic Use to Inform Stewardship Interventions

Antibiotic stewardship has been shown to improve patient outcomes, decrease adverse events, and decrease antibiotic resistance. This group of investigators previously partnered with collaborators at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and conducted relevant pilot work in developing and validating electronic indicators of inappropriate antibiotic prescribing for 8 conditions, amongst which are the four conditions of interest in this study: adult inpatients with community-acquired pneumonia; pediatric inpatients with community-acquired pneumonia; adult outpatients with acute pharyngitis; and pediatric outpatients with acute otitis media. Methods were developed to generate automatic, routine reports to identify elements of inappropriate antibiotic use including; 1) the decision to initiate antibiotic therapy (pharyngitis and acute otitis media only); 2) the choice of antibiotic agent; and 3) the duration of antibiotic use. The purpose of this project is to assess the impact of these developed electronic indicators on supporting antibiotic stewardship efforts to improve the appropriateness of antibiotic use, as well as the acceptability and feasibility of delivering these reports to prescribers. The investigators aim to: 1. Refine and validate indicators of appropriate antibiotic use by utilizing Electronic Health Record data, including International Classification of Diseases version 10 codes, medications, laboratory data, co-morbid medical conditions, site of care, clinical documentation, prior hospitalizations, and medication exposure. The researchers will validate the definitions of the various conditions and appropriateness captured electronically with a manual chart review of clinical documentation. 2. Implement a scalable and sustainable antimicrobial stewardship feedback report-based intervention for these four conditions informed by a rapid user-centered design process. 3. Track the impact of the stewardship interventions and report to key stakeholders, including prescribers. 4. Create a publicly available toolkit based on the findings of this project that includes: (i) analytic tools and resources for using the automated reports of key indicators to target stewardship interventions and (ii) an implementation guide to inform the application of automated reports to stewardship in the inpatient and outpatient settings. If proven effective, these electronic health record-based approaches hold the promise to greatly enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of antimicrobial stewardship initiatives.