Question

You review antibiotic use for pneumonia and find the average duration of antibiotics is 10 days with a range from 5-14 days depending on the provider. Which antibiotic use measure could be most useful to track in order to evaluate the impact of a new facility treatment guideline that specified 5 days of antibiotics should be used for treatment of bacterial pneumonia? Please select the best answer.

Answer 1

"Since the intervention is designed to reduce the number of days that a resident receives antibiotics for bacterial pneumonia, the rate of antibiotic days of therapy per 1,000 resident days is most likely to change if the intervention is effective. Because this effort is not trying to reduce antibiotic starts for bacterial pneumonia, neither the rate of antibiotic starts nor the proportion of antibiotics given for pneumonia may change as a result of the intervention. Although the rate of antibiotic use by class might change if one antibiotic class is most commonly used to treat bacterial pneumonia, this measure wouldn't be the best choice for evaluating the new guideline."