Managing Antibiotics in Hospitals

I got this story from PharmacyOneSource the other day and thought I would share it.

“Between one-third and a half of all hospital patients receive antimicrobial drugs, and antibiotic prescriptions can account for 30-50 percent of many hospitals’ total drug budgets. Researchers estimate up to half of these are unnecessary, and this excess also contributes to the problem of drug-resistant bacteria.”

They gave two case examples:

• Johns Hopkins implemented a web-based approval system for more than 30 antimicrobial drugs on a “restricted” list. The system forces orders to be approved by an infectious disease specialist before they are sent to the pharmacy. They found it saved $370,000 in the first year of its use.

• University of Virginia found that switching between two antibiotics, linezolid and vancomycin, every three months in the surgical ICU decreased the MRSA infection rate from 1.9 to 1.4 patients per 100 admissions.