64 - Impact of a Duration Bundle on Antimicrobial Use in a Pediatric Hospital

Background: Limiting antibiotic durations to the shortest effective duration is a strong recommendation with moderate-quality evidence in the 2016 IDSA Antimicrobial Stewardship Program (ASP) guidelines. An ASP bundle including a decrease in antimicrobial automatic stop dates from 14 days to 10 days along with a guideline for standard durations for 48 specific indications was implemented at a tertiary pediatric hospital in November 2019. The purpose of this review and was to assess the impact of this ASP initiative on patient outcomes and hospital cost-savings by comparison of pre-intervention and post-intervention data.

Methods: A set of antimicrobial duration recommendations for pediatric patients was created by the Antimicrobial Stewardship Program, Pediatric Hospital Medicine providers, and Infectious Disease providers specific to indication, agent, or pathogen. After education of medical care providers and distribution of the recommendations, automatic stop dates in the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) were updated from 14 days to 10 days for all antimicrobials. Concomitant advertising campaigns were shown on all hospital screensavers. Data were collected for a one month pre-intervention period of Nov.15 - Dec.15, 2018 including 133 patients and a one month intervention period of Nov.15 - Dec.15, 2019 including 125 patients.

Results: The average length of stay decreased from an average of 8.3 days pre-implementation to 6.7 days (p=0.043) post implementation. The ratio of actual to recommended duration also decreased from 1.56 to 1.30 (p< 0.001) when comparing pre vs. post initiative. Balancing measures did not change for restarting treatment within 48 hours of stopping or readmission within 30 days for the same infection. The decrease in inpatient therapy translated to more than $10,000 per year in direct drug cost.

Conclusion: This intervention lead to a significant reduction in average length of stay per admission and significantly reduced the secondary outcomes of the total duration of antimicrobial therapy and the ratio of actual duration compared to recommended duration. This lead to cost savings and decreased inappropriate antibiotic exposure.