Abstract
Background
Hospital-acquired CDI contribute to significant morbidity, mortality, and cost burden in hospitalized patients. Clinical practice guidelines recommend strict testing criteria when employing nucleic acid amplification testing alone as to not test asymptomatic carriers. A BPA within the electronic medical record (EMR) may assist with this screening.
Methods
At our 9-hospital system, we created a BPA to help identify patients who may not meet criteria for CDI testing. Initial BPA (January 2018) asked if patient had 3 or more stools (yes/no) and if laxatives were administered in the last 48 hours (yes/no). An expanded BPA was updated to pull medication administration records for use of laxatives in the prior 48 hours (August 2018) and notified providers of recent C. difficile testing in the past 7 days (January 2019). C. difficile orders from March 2017 (historical), March 2018 (intervention 1), and March 2019 (intervention 2) were evaluated to assess impact of these interventions.
Results
C. difficile testing during 30,621 (historical), 31,299 (intervention 1), and 31,960 (intervention 2) patient-days were evaluated. Rates of C. difficile orders and infections are reported in the table. Ratio of positive C. difficile specimens to tested specimens were similar between the historical arm (51 of 402; 12.7%) and both intervention 1 (42 of 271; 15.5%) and intervention 2 (45 of 316; 14.2%) arms (P = 0.3 and P = 0.5, respectively). Intervention 1 and intervention 2 arms were similar in all metrics. Statistical analysis was performed using Stata, v.14.2.
Conclusion
Implementation of a decision support tool to assist with C. difficile testing significantly decreased order rates in both the initial and expanded BPA intervention arms. Compared with historical rates, incidence of CDI decreased in both intervention arms though these were not statistically significant. Similarly, ratio of positive specimens to specimens tested increased in both intervention arms, though not significant, indicating a trend toward improved patient selection. To improve appropriate CDI testing, further oversight and/or education is needed to accompany implementation of an EMR decision support tool, such as BPAs.
Disclosures
All authors: No reported disclosures.
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