Clinical Pharmacists Take the Lead as Antimicrobial Stewardship Experts
- BELLEVUE, WA, February 03, 2007 — Drug-resistant pathogens are a growing threat to all people, especially those in healthcare settings. The CDC reports that each year nearly 2 million patients in the United States get an infection in a hospital. More than 70% of the bacteria that cause hospital-acquired infections are resistant to at least one of the drugs most commonly used to treat them.
New guidelines on developing antimicrobial stewardship programs recently published by the Infectious Diseases Society of America and featured in a January issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases emphasize the importance of a team approach that involves clinical pharmacists and physicians.
Marianne Billeter, clinical specialist in infectious diseases at Ochsner Health System said in AJHP News that current research supports the leading role that the pharmacy profession has taken in creating effective stewardship programs.
Sentri7 by Pharmacy OneSource provides clinical pharmacists day to day, real-time patient monitoring for antimicrobial stewardship, and ties in with Quantifi, a clinical documentation application, for immediate intervention documentation on each patient.
"We"re pleased to see the progress in the fight against antibiotic resistance and the role ISDA suggests clinical pharmacists take in this battle," said Keith Streckenbach, Executive Vice President of Pharmacy OneSource. "Sentri7 is a clinical pharmacy decision support tool with the primary goal of greatly reducing the burden of collecting, organizing and assessing lab, patient and medication data - all activities directly supporting antimicrobial stewardship. More specifically, activities related to CMS quality measures, ADE prevention, IV-to-PO, renal monitoring, and importantly antibiotic monitoring are improved with the automation capabilities of Sentri7."
The ISDA guidelines use this example case: A small, 120-bed community hospital that used an infectious diseases physician and clinical pharmacist three days per week to review patients receiving multiple, prolonged, or high-cost courses of antimicrobial therapy. Sixty-nine percent of 488 recommendations were implemented, resulting in a 19% reduction in antimicrobial expenditures for an estimated annual savings of $177,000, compared with the pre-intervention period. (LaRocco A Jr. "Concurrent antibiotic review programs-a role for infectious diseases specialists at small community hospitals." Clin Infect Dis 2003; 37:742-3.)
Every active patient in an organization is constantly under surveillance by Sentri7, looking for ADE risks, antimicrobial opportunities, IV-to-PO candidates and other user-defined rules with real-time alerts communicated and managed via a secure, HIPAA-compliant web interface. The goals of antimicrobial stewardship programs: improved patient outcomes, shorter lengths of stay and reduced drug expenditures are a significant benefit of Sentri7. Add to this the primary benefit of clinical workload optimization -- boosting clinical productivity by up to 25% per day.
For more information, visit http://www.pharamacyonesource.com/applications/sentri7
03.02.2007 - 8:24 Source: 24-7pressrelease.com | Read: 369 X
