1791. Leveraging EMR Alerts for Vancomycin Time Outs


 
 
 Vancomycin represented the most used antibiotic at our academic medical center from 2014-2022. To enhance compliance with the “antibiotic time out” part of the CDC Core Elements for Stewardship, we designed an electronic medical record (EMR) best practice alert (BPA) to assist providers in identifying patients eligible for vancomycin discontinuation.
 
 
 
 This is a single center, retrospective pre (06/01/14-2/24/20)/post (02/25/20-03/31/22) comparison of vancomycin utilization after the introduction of a locally validated automated vancomycin time-out. The BPA alerted on patients who had received vancomycin for 72h, had no microbiological evidence of methicillin resistant S. aureus, and had no infectious diseases consult. While other vancomycin reduction strategies had previously been implemented as part of the stewardship program, no other intervention debuted during the same time period. An interrupted time series analysis was performed to assess immediate and ongoing trend changes of institutional vancomycin use. Wilcoxon rank sum and chi2 analyses were also performed.
 
 
 
 There were 36,817 inpatient vancomycin orders placed. The BPA triggered during 1,881 (15.7%) orders in the post-BPA period, which was 49.6% of the 3,794 orders still active at 72h. After BPA introduction, there was an immediate decrease in vancomycin days of therapy (DOT)/1000 patient days (PD) ±SE (-8.5 ±3.6; P = 0.021) followed by a significant decrease in the monthly trend relative to the pre-intervention trend (-0.7 DOT/1000 PD ±0.2; P< 0.001). Median vancomycin DOT/1000 PD decreased from 145.9 (IQR 140.2-153.0) to 117.3 (IQR 107.7-122.6) in pre and post periods respectively (P< 0.001). Length of therapy (LOT) decreased, orders were more commonly discontinued by day 5, and orders were more likely to be discontinued prior to discharge. Separate analysis including only orders with >72h showed similar results (Table 1). Table 1Vancomycin length of therapy (LOT) pre and post-BPA Time Out.Figure 1Vancomycin days of therapy per 1000 patient days (DOT/1000PD) trends pre and post-BPA Time Out.
 
 
 
 Introduction of an EMR automated vancomycin time out was an effective tool to decrease vancomycin utilization at an academic medical center.
 
 
 
 All Authors: No reported disclosures.
