Urine cultures collected from catheterized patients have a high likelihood of false-positive results due to colonization. The team examined the impact of a clinical decision support (CDS) tool that includes catheter information on test utilization and patient-level outcomes.
Many EHR-based interventions are implemented as quality improvement initiatives; thus, it is difficult to disentangle the effect of multiple features of a decision support process that are simultaneous. Future studies that evaluate decision support for urine cultures in a randomized, controlled manner could identify the potential efficacy and effect size of the various decision support features. However, based on the results of this before-and-after analysis of the quality improvement initiative, the CDS tool was associated with reduced urine-culture utilization and antibiotic use.
Check out the full article by Dr. Yarrington and team in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology.