by
Christina Hwang, Contributing Reporter | July 22, 2016
Designed to help hospitals become
compliant with CMS and Joint
Commission requirements
To help hospital staff members safely reduce the amount of antibiotics administered to patients, Cardinal Health has launched its Antimicrobial Stewardship Program.
Cardinal’s program will help hospitals become compliant with CMS and Joint Commission requirements that will be rolled out in January 2017. The goal is to strengthen a facility's antibiotic initiatives and help to combat hospital acquired infections (HAIs) and antibiotic resistant "superbugs."
The program will have three components: assessment, implementation and antimicrobial analytics.
- Assessment Will analyze a hospital’s current processes and determine if its current core elements of stewardship and the corresponding new requirements are being met. The program will then recommend how to close the gap between the two.
- Implementation Steps will be implemented to help hospitals become compliant and will include educating hospital staff members. According to the announcement, the implementations are customized to each hospital’s needs.
- Antimicrobial analytics This will analyze the trend that a hospital has with choosing antibiotics and how the drugs are used in patients. The analytics will compare “drug versus bug” to determine the resistance patterns of the infection.
According to the CDC, approximately 23,000 deaths occur each year because patients become sick by antibiotic-resistant infections. Additionally, up to 50 percent of antibiotic use in hospitals is “inappropriate.”
“The changing health care environment is complex, and hospital decision makers are looking for guidance in Antimicrobial Stewardship requirements,” said Kathy Chase, product leader in Drug Cost Control Solutions at Cardinal Health, in a statement.
“We’ve heard this repeatedly from customers as they navigate the new requirements … we’re proud to offer a program that meets that needs of our community and helps it achieve optimal clinical outcomes related to antimicrobial use,” she said.
The announcement reports how recent studies utilizing Cardinal Health’s Antimicrobial Stewardship Program benefits hospitals of different sizes. For one hospital, there was a 50 percent reduction in certain antimicrobial drug spending.
