Regents of the University of Michigan (U-M) and the Duke University Hospital now share a distinction among infectious disease and antimicrobial experts with their recent designation of Antimicrobial Stewardship Centers of Excellence by the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA).
The designation was just launched back in October, meant to recognize institutions that achieve standards laid out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and promote stewardship of the nation’s drug supply. Criteria were thus based on the CDC’s Core Elements of Hospital Antibiotic Stewardship Programs, including a commitment to leadership, accountability, improvement of antibiotic use, reporting antibiotic use and resistance and educating clinicians about that resistance, among others.
“IDSA is committed to infectious diseases-led antimicrobial stewardship programs as an essential component in the fight against antimicrobial resistance that leads to more than 23,000 deaths per year and over $20 billion in unnecessary health care costs,” IDSA President Paul Auwaerter said. “The IDSA Antimicrobial Stewardship Centers of Excellence program recognizes institutions who lead in establishing highly effective antimicrobial stewardship programs that help clinicians give their patients optimal anti-infective therapies.”
For the IDSA program, they have put particular stock on facilities’ abilities to create stewardship methods, use the electronic health record system and educate their medical staff.