National Quality Partners Playbook: Antibiotic Stewardship in Acute Care

7 years 2 months ago

Antibiotics are powerful drugs to treat serious infections. However, decades of overprescribing and misuse have resulted in bacteria that are increasingly resistant to these potent drugs, creating a growing threat of new superbugs that are difficult, and sometimes even impossible, to treat. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), drug-resistant bacteria cause two million illnesses and 23,000 deaths annually. National Quality Forum’s National Quality Partners (NQP) convened more than 25 experts and national stakeholders from the public and private sectors—including patient advocates, infectious disease physicians and pharmacists, and acute-care providers—to develop National Quality Partners Playbook: Antibiotic Stewardship in Acute Care. The Playbook is designed to help hospitals and health systems strengthen existing antibiotic stewardship initiatives or create antibiotic stewardship programs from the ground up. Based on CDC’s Core Elements of Hospital Antibiotic Stewardship Programs, NQP’s Playbook offers practical strategies for implementing high-quality antibiotic stewardship programs in hospitals nationwide. Earn Continuing Education Credits with the Antibiotic Stewardship Playbook