Background:
The Antimicrobial Stewardship Program (ASP) was formalized as an official committee in 2012, adhering to the principles of antimicrobial stewardship as described in a 2012 joint guideline published by the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) and Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society (PIDS).
These principles include, but are not limited to: optimizing patient outcomes while minimizing unintended consequences, such as medication-induced adverse events, antimicrobial resistance and incidence of opportunistic infections as well as attempting to reduce healthcare-associated costs, namely with the unnecessary overuse of antimicrobials.
With the publication of CDC’s Core Elements of Hospital Antibiotic Stewardship Programs in 2014, the scope of our ASP has broadened to match and place into practice the seven elements within the three inpatient hospitals and four emergency departments within our system: leadership commitment, accountability, drug expertise, actions to support optimal antibiotic use, tracking and monitoring antibiotic prescribing, use and resistance, reporting information on improving antibiotic use and resistance, education of clinicians, patients and families.
Membership: A multidisciplinary committee is currently in place that includes representation from the following areas:
- Administration
- Infectious Diseases physicians
- Emergency Department physicians
- Inpatient physician group
- Infection Prevention and Control/Nursing
- Microbiology specialists
- Informatics/Information Technology
- Clinical pharmacy
All pertinent documentation related to ASP (such as meeting minutes, medication use evaluations, antibiotic reporting and metric evaluations) are reported to Pharmacy & Therapeutics Committee, which, upon approval, then goes to Medical Executive Committee for final review and final approval.