More than a Third of Patients at Community Hospitals Receive Inappropriate BSI Antibiotics

One out of every three community hospital patients being treated for a bloodstream infection (BSI) get inappropriate antibiotic therapy, according to a new study published in PLoS One and reported on by FierceHealthcare. The research was led by Deverick J. Anderson, MD, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Physician Faculty Scholars alumnus.

Researchers conducted the study on nearly 1,500 adult patients with BSIs at nine community non-academic hospitals in North Carolina and Virginia from 2003 to 2006. Hospital staff gave more than one in three (38 percent) of the patients studied inappropriate antibiotics, according to researchers. Most of the infections analyzed in the study were health care associated, according to the study abstract.

MedPage Today, Infection Control Today and HealthDay News also reported on Anderson’s findings.   

An INQRI-funded study found that a nurse-led intervention combining a “bundle” of evidence-based practices with a comprehensive safety program dramatically reduced the mean rate of bloodstream infections. The study was conducted by David Thompson, DSNc, MSN, RN, and Jill Marsteller PhD, MPP, associate professors at Johns Hopkins University in the School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health, respectively, and by J. Bryan Sexton, PhD, now at the Duke University Health System Patient Safety Center.