CDPH and IEHP Pilot Stewardship Collaboration and Toolkit
In the United States, nearly half of outpatient antimicrobial prescriptions may be inappropriate (e.g., selection, dosing, or duration), and at least 30% of outpatient antimicrobial prescriptions are unnecessary.
1 Inappropriate prescriptions lead to suboptimal patient outcomes and contribute to spreading antimicrobial resistance. To help address this problem, CDPH is collaborating with the Inland Empire Health Plan (IEHP) on a pilot project and toolkit to improve antimicrobial stewardship in outpatient and urgent care settings.
Our primary goals are to:
- Encourage facilities to develop antimicrobial stewardship programs based on the
CDC’s four core elements of outpatient stewardship.1
- Monitor facilities’ stewardship programs over time to assess the effectiveness of the toolkit and inform improvements.
- Learn from each facility’s experiences to improve stewardship both within and outside the IEHP network.
Toolkit
The
toolkit includes multiple options for facilities to adhere to each of the CDC’s four core elements of outpatient antimicrobial stewardship.
As a
supplement, we have created and compiled additional stewardship resources including:
- A template for a brief stewardship plan
- A template stewardship commitment statement for use within the organization
- Stewardship education resources for patients and providers
To assist IEHP’s facility outreach, we created instructions and templates to guide initial and follow-up meetings, as well as data collection fields to assess the toolkit’s success and inform improvements. CDPH may be able to participate in outreach meetings to provide additional stewardship expertise and support. The CDPH Antimicrobial Stewardship Team also offers
one-on-one stewardship consultations.