The study, published Feb. 28, sought to assess whether use of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s safety program for improving antibiotic use, would reduce antibiotic use in long-term care settings. Program training ran from December 2018 to November 2019, with researchers measuring changes in antibiotic use and process measures.
Key findings:
- Of the 523 facilities included, 439 completed the full program and saw decreases per 1,000 resident days for the number of antibiotic treatment courses started and length of therapy.
- There was a significant reduction in antibiotic days of therapy for oral antibiotics but not in intravenous antibiotics across the entire cohort.
- The number of urine cultures per 1,000 resident-days decreased from 3.0 to 2.6 between January 2019 and December 2019.
- There was no statistically significant change in the number of facility-onset C.difficile events per 10,000 resident-days.
