Innovation Spotlight
Innovations in antimicrobial prescribing at Montefiore
The Need
Diagnosis and management of infectious diseases caused by viruses, bacteria, fungi, and parasites is a source of anxiety and confusion for all healthcare providers, including ID docs! For many years, textbooks or pocket manuals were the primary centralized ID resource for healthcare providers. These were often unwieldy or difficult to use.
The Solution + Implementation
The Sanford Guide has long been THE trusted resource on all things ID. It offers users the most up to date ID resources created by leading experts in the field. Recently, the Sanford Guide created a user-friendly smartphone app and web resources offering regularly updated management guidelines for every infectious disease imaginable, including COVID-19. To take things a step further, they've created a customizable version in which individual medical centers can use their own local bacterial and fungal susceptibility patterns (i.e. antibiograms) to develop and disseminate tailor-made treatment guidelines for their own institutions. In 2018 Montefiore partnered with the Sanford Guide to host all important ID content created by the Antimicrobial Stewardship Program: hospital-specific and ICU-specific antibiograms, C.difficile management guidelines, Infection Control isolation guidelines, syndrome-based antibiotic guidelines, and much much more. The smartphone app and web resource are available to all MMC/Einstein users for free! Personal subscriptions to the comprehensive Sanford Guide app otherwise cost > $50/user!
Preliminary results
Since the launch in 2019, 703 individual users at the medical center and medical school have registered. Top accessed pages include antibiotic dosing guidelines for renal dose adjustment, C.difficile guidelines, isolation guidelines, and several more.
Next steps
Upcoming Sanford Guide upgrades include messaging features, which we plan to use to remind users about several important issues such as any updates to COVID-19 testing, isolation, or management protocols at MMC. We will also use this feature to remind users to take an "antibiotic timeout" on a regular basis - double check doses and durations and see if antibiotics can be safely stopped to prevent renal failure and C.difficile
The Team
The Antimicrobial Stewardship Program at the Montefiore Medical Center, which was awarded the IDSA Stewardship Center of Excellence distinction in 2018 for its highly innovative program.
To access content online and to register for the app, visit: https://webedition.sanfordguide.com/en