Implementation of a pharmacy-driven rapid bacteremia response program

Purpose This report describes a comprehensive pharmacy-driven rapid bacteremia response program.Summary This novel program positioned the pharmacy department at a large, community health system to receive and respond to critical microbiologic diagnostic testing results, 24/7/365. The program empowered pharmacists to provide centralized, comprehensive care including assessing blood culture Gram stain results, adjusting antibiotic therapy per protocol, ordering repeat blood cultures, analyzing and interpreting rapid molecular diagnostic test results, placing orders for contact isolation, and communicating antibiotic recommendations to the treatment team. In the first year after program implementation, 2,282 blood culture Gram stains and 2,046 rapid diagnostic test results were called in to the pharmacy department. The program reduced the median time to effective therapy in patients who did not already have active antimicrobial orders from over 10 hours to less than 1 hour. Based on the Gram stain results, antibiotics were started per protocol in 34.2% of patients. Based on the rapid molecular diagnostic test results, adjustments were made to antibiotic regimens in 55.7% of cases after discussion with a provider. Of these adjustments, 39.9% were for escalation of antibiotics and 37.7% were for de-escalation of antibiotics.Conclusion By expanding the scope of pharmacy practice, barriers to optimizing clinical care were overcome.