Hospital and Physician Update

November – December 2018

Hospital medicine safety initiative targets unnecessary antibiotic use

After nearly a year of data collection, the Michigan Hospital Medicine Safety Consortium launched an initiative earlier this year to improve antimicrobial use for patients with pneumonia and urinary tract infections.

This Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan-sponsored Collaborative Quality Initiative, part of Value Partnerships, focuses on improving the quality of care for hospitalized medical patients.

HMS is targeting several areas for improvement, including:

• Reducing antibiotic treatment duration for patients with uncomplicated community-acquired pneumonia
• Reducing urine culture testing for patients with no symptoms of an infection
• Reducing antibiotic treatment for patients with asymptomatic bacteriuria, a kidney and bladder condition

HMS also issued an antimicrobial use toolkit for hospitals and medical professionals in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“About 23,000 people die every year in the U.S. due to a drug-resistant infection,” said Dr. Amy McKenzie, medical director, Value Partnerships. “That’s why efforts to reduce unnecessary antibiotic use such as those being undertaken by the HMS collaborative quality initiative are so vitally important. These efforts are designed to help protect the effectiveness of antibiotics for use in those situations when they are truly needed.”

Inappropriate and indiscriminate antibiotic use has led to infections that are increasingly difficult to treat. Every year, about 2 million people in the United States contract a drug-resistant infection, according to the CDC.

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