The federal CDC in Atlanta offers a set of key principles to guide efforts to improve antibiotic use and, therefore, advance patient safety and improve outcomes.
The CDC released Core Elements of Hospital Antibiotic Stewardship Programs in 2014, Core Elements of Antibiotic Stewardship for Nursing Homes in 2015, Core Elements of Outpatient Antibiotic Stewardship in 2016, and Implementation of Antibiotic Stewardship Core Elements at Small and Critical Access Hospitals in 2017.
CDC tracks implementation of antibiotic stewardship programs meeting all Core Elements in hospitals, and the results can be found in CDC’s Antibiotic Resistance Patient Safety Atlas at: https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/PSA/STMapView.html.
The following are links to the Core Elements:
The CDC recommends that hospitals use the Core Elements of Hospital Antibiotic Stewardship Programs to identify the key components needed for a successful antibiotic stewardship program.
Additionally, hospitals may find the National Quality Partners Playbook: Antibiotic Stewardship in Acute Care helpful as it provides practical strategies for hospitals with different levels of resources to meet each core element: http://bit.ly/2zqby7f.
More information about CDC’s efforts to combat antibiotic resistance can be found at: https://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/index.html.
More information about Clostridium difficile infections can be found at: https://www.cdc.gov/HAI/organisms/cdiff/Cdiff_infect.html.