Pharmacist-driven initiative for management of Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia using a clinical decision support system

Purpose. The development and implementation of a clinical decision support system (CDSS) for pharmacists to use for identification of and intervention on patients with Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia (SAB) are described. Summary. A project team consisting of 3 informatics pharmacists and 2 infectious diseases (ID) pharmacists was formed to develop the CDSS. The primary CDSS component was a scoring system that generates a score in real time for a patient with a positive blood culture for S. aureus. In addition, 4 tools were configured in the CDSS to facilitate pharmacists' workflow and documentation tasks: a patient list, a patient list report, a handoff note, and a standardized progress note. Pharmacists are required to evaluate the patient list at least once per shift to identify newly listed patients with a blood culture positive for S. aureus and provide recommendations if necessary. The CDSS was implemented over a period of 2.5 months, with a pharmacy informatics resident dedicating approximately 200 hours in total. An audit showed that the standardized progress note was completed for 100% of the patients, with a mean time to completion of 8.5 hours. Importantly, this initiative can be implemented in hospitals without specialty-trained ID pharmacists. This study provides a framework for future antimicrobial stewardship program initiatives to incorporate pharmacists into the process of providing real-time recommendations. Conclusion. A pharmacist-driven patient scoring system was successfully used to improve adherence to quality performance measures for management of SAB. A pharmacist-driven CDSS can be utilized to assist in the management of SAB.