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One of the pneumonia performance measures used by the Joint Commission and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is antibiotic delivery within 4 hours of patient arrival at an emergency department. Researchers surveyed 129 medical directors and chairpersons of academic EDs to assess their attitudes toward this standard and what measures they had taken to meet it.
Of the 90 respondents, half felt that the standard is not an accurate measure of quality of ED care. Actions taken to meet the standard included automated ordering of chest x-rays at triage (51% of respondents), prioritizing patients with suspected pneumonia (41%), and administering antibiotics before chest x-ray results are available (37%).