InPART Rx - Inpatient Provider Antibiotic Rate Benchmarking to Reduce Unnecessary Prescribing

InPART Rx is a collaborative research study to measure the impact of a planned quality improvement initiative to reduce unnecessary antibiotic prescribing by the Hospital Medicine Service through a process of receiving peer-comparison summary prescribing data bimonthly. The initiative is a collaboration between EHC Pharmacy, the School of Medicine (SOM) Division of Infectious Diseases, and the SOM Hospital Medicine Service.

Roughly one-third of antibiotics prescribed in the hospital setting are for the wrong dose, wrong drug, or wrong duration, resulting in considerable unnecessary antibiotic exposure among the inpatient population. Such use increases patient risk for adverse events such as infectious diarrhea or antibiotic-resistant infections. Inpatients cared for by Hospital Medicine providers are a growing proportion of all patients, and developing efficient techniques to reduce unnecessary antibiotic prescribing by these providers would benefit this growing population of patients.

The research team aims to measure the impact of implementing a process to provide peer comparisons of antibiotic prescribing among Hospitalists at four Emory Healthcare (EHC) hospitals back to these providers in an effort to minimize unnecessary antibiotic prescribing. All 147 current Hospital Medicine Service providers will participate as part of the Division's quality improvement effort, receiving no compensation. Only summary patient encounter information without private health insurance (PHI) will be presented back to the providers; investigators will track changes in summary prescribing metrics and summary patient outcomes every month. If such an automated peer-comparison feedback process is effective in safely reducing unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions in EHC, similar processes may be adapted to other inpatient provider groups or serve as a model for other healthcare systems.

The goal of this quality improvement (QI) work is to use traditional QI methods of peer-comparison through data feedback to improve antibiotic prescribing among EHC HMS by reducing unnecessary antibiotic use and improving patient safety on the EHC HMS.