Pediatric vancomycin use in 421 hospitals in the United States, 2008

Recommendations to prevent the spread of vancomycin resistance have been in place since 1995 and include guidelines for inpatient pediatric use of vancomycin. The emergence of large databases allows us to describe variation in pediatric vancomycin across hospitals. We analyzed a database with hospitalizations for children under 18 at 421 hospitals in 2008.

The Premier hospital 2008 database, consisting of records for 877,201 pediatric hospitalizations in 421 hospitals, was analyzed. Stratified analyses and logistic mixed effects models were used to calculate the probability of vancomycin use while considering random effects of hospital variation, hospital fixed effects and patient effects, and the hierarchical structure of the data. Most hospitals (221) had fewer than 10 hospitalizations with vancomycin use in the study period, and 47 hospitals reported no vancomycin use in 17,271 pediatric hospitalizations. At the other end of the continuum, 21 hospitals (5.6% of hospitals) each had over 200 hospitalizations with vancomycin use, and together, accounted for more than 50% of the pediatric hospitalizations with vancomycin use. The mixed effects modeling showed hospital variation in the probability of vancomycin use that was statistically significant after controlling for teaching status, urban or rural location, size, region of the country, patient ethnic group, payor status, and APR-mortality and severity codes.

The number and percentage of pediatric hospitalizations with vancomycin use varied greatly across hospitals and was not explained by hospital or patient characteristics in our logistic models. Public health efforts to reduce vancomycin use should be intensified at hospitals with highest use.