The Power of Quality Improvement to Improve Antibiotic Prescribing in Hospitalized Children

In 2011, the first U.S. national evidence-based guideline for the management of uncomplicated community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) was published and endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics (JW Pediatr Adolesc Med Sep 28 2011). A team at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center used quality-improvement methods to foster rapid adoption of the national guideline.

The team focused on improving compliance with the recommendation to use intravenous ampicillin as first-line antibiotic therapy for previously healthy, fully immunized children with uncomplicated pneumonia who require hospitalization. The goal was to increase the percent of admitted children (age range, 3 months to 19 years) with uncomplicated CAP who receive ampicillin to 80…