Maintaining the health of the patients in your community is most likely a top priority for you and your staff. One of the greatest dangers to public health, however comes from something many think of only as a positive – antibiotics. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), antibiotic resistance is among the greatest public health threats today. It leads to about two million infections and causes 23,000 deaths every year in the United States. This threat goes beyond the hospital. The CDC reports at least 30 percent of outpatient antibiotic prescriptions in the U.S. are unnecessary.
Antibiotic stewardship is critical in all health care settings in which antibiotics are prescribed. It is also the best way to help improve antibiotic-related patient safety and slow the spread of antibiotic resistance. The goal of effective antibiotic stewardship is to maximize the benefit of antibiotic treatment while minimizing harm for the patient and the community.
Mountain-Pacific Quality Health is partnering with outpatient settings in Montana, Wyoming, Alaska, Hawaii and the U.S. Pacific Territories of American Samoa, Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands to help fight the imminent threat of antibiotic resistance. Outpatient settings include many hospital-related departments and facilities such as emergency departments, emergency medicine clinics, hospital-owned clinics, retail pharmacies, urgent care clinics and more. By working together to implement the CDC’s Core Elements of Outpatient Antibiotic Stewardship in outpatient health care settings, we can improve antibiotic stewardship in our communities.
We cannot do this important work without you, the outpatient health care providers that touch countless lives every day. We know that taking on one more health initiative can be daunting, but Mountain-Pacific is here to support your efforts. Many outpatient settings are already working on at least a few of the Core Elements of Outpatient Antibiotic Stewardship and most could implement even more Core Elements without too much extra work. To help outpatient settings identify what they are already doing and what they could be doing, Mountain-Pacific has created an easy checklist. We are also happy to talk to you about what support you need to check all the boxes!
Join the Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria through Antibiotic Stewardship in Communities initiative and help protect your patients and eliminate this community threat. Mountain-Pacific is here to assist you in any way we can. Together, we can help stop the spread of antibiotic resistance.
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