The use of best practice alerts with the development of an antimicrobial stewardship navigator to promote antibiotic de-escalation in the electronic medical record.
OBJECTIVE
Develop a clinical decision support tool comprised of an electronic medical record alert and antimicrobial stewardship navigator to facilitate antimicrobial stewardship.


METHODS
We analyzed alerts targeting antimicrobial de-escalation to assess the effectiveness of the navigator as a stewardship tool. The alert provides antimicrobial recommendations, then directs providers to the navigator, which includes order management, relevant patient information, evidence-based clinical information, and bidirectional communication capability.


METHODS
Academic, tertiary care medical center with an electronic medical record.


METHODS
Alerts containing stewardship recommendations and immediate access to the navigator were created.


RESULTS
Antibiotic use and response data were collected 1 day before stewardship recommendation via the best practice alert (BPA) tool and 1 day after the BPA tool response. A total of 1,285 stewardship BPAs were created. Two hundred and forty-four (18.9%) of the BPAs were created and acted upon within 72 hours for the purpose of de-escalation: 169 (69%) were accepted, 30 (12%) were accepted with modification, and 45 (18%) were rejected. Statistically significant decreases in total antibiotic use as well as in use of broad-spectrum (anti-methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and anti-pseudomonal) agents occurred when accepted recommendations were compared with rejected recommendations.


CONCLUSIONS
We describe the successful development of a clinical decision support tool to perform prospective audit and feedback comprised of an alert and navigator system featuring evidence-based recommendations and clinical and educational information. We demonstrate that this tool improves antibiotic use through our example of de-escalation.
Department of Pharmacy, University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics, Madison, Wisconsin.
Lucas
L
Schulz
Kurt
K
Osterby
Barry
B
Fox
D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D020000:Decision Support Systems, Clinical; D004360:Drug Therapy, Computer-Assisted; D057286:Electronic Health Records; D006801:Humans; D050316:Medical Order Entry Systems; D010865:Pilot Projects; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic; D012984:Software
D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents