Objective: The primary objective was to determine the rate of clinical actions taken post-discharge on updated microbiology results by an ID pharmacist-led team. Secondary objectives were to describe the microbiology results requiring intervention, characterize interventions by type and severity, and determine time from result to clinical review.
Design: Retrospective cohort study.
Setting: Four hospitals within Mayo Clinic, including two large academic centers and two Mayo Clinic Health System sites.
Participants: Adult patients at four sites within Mayo Clinic from 1/1/2019 to 2/28/2023. Eligible patients had a hospitalization with an ID consult and an updated microbiology result reported after discharge.
Intervention: Pharmacists reviewed a report of selected patients with microbiology tests that resulted post-discharge within the last 24-96 hours. Interventions were recorded electronically in real-time by the pharmacist. Of those patient encounters with an intervention, a sample of 200 patient encounters was randomly selected for detailed chart abstraction.
Results: A total of 6,792 encounters with at least one microbiology result reviewed post-discharge were identified. Of these encounters, 1977 (29%) had at least one resulting intervention. Median time from test update to clinical review was 27.2 hours (IQR 21.6-69.6). The highest severity ratings, in which failure to intervene may have resulted in patient harm, were assigned to the intervention in 28% of cases.
Conclusions: For patients seen by an inpatient ID consult service, a post-hospital discharge microbiology result review process performed by ID-trained pharmacists effectively addressed abnormal results during the transition of care. Similar processes may be considered at other institutions.
© The Author(s) 2024.