Feasibility and Value of Developing a Regional Antibiogram for Community Hospitals

OBJECTIVETo determine the feasibility and value of developing a regional antibiogram for community hospitals.DESIGNMulticenter retrospective analysis of antibiograms.SETTING AND PARTICIPANTSA total of 20 community hospitals in central and eastern North Carolina and south central Virginia participated in this study.METHODSWe combined antibiogram data from participating hospitals for 13 clinically relevant gram-negative pathogen-antibiotic combinations. From this combined antibiogram, we developed a regional antibiogram based on the mean susceptibilities of the combined data.RESULTSWe combined a total of 69,778 bacterial isolates across 13 clinically relevant gram-negative pathogen-antibiotic combinations (median for each combination, 1100; range, 174-27,428). Across all pathogen-antibiotic combinations, 69% of local susceptibility rates fell within 1 SD of the regional mean susceptibility rate, and 97% of local susceptibilities fell within 2 SD of the regional mean susceptibility rate. No individual hospital had >1 pathogen-antibiotic combination with a local susceptibility rate >2 SD of the regional mean susceptibility rate. All hospitals' local susceptibility rates were within 2 SD of the regional mean susceptibility rate for low-prevalence pathogens (<500 isolates cumulative for the region).CONCLUSIONSSmall community hospitals frequently cannot develop an accurate antibiogram due to a paucity of local data. A regional antibiogram is likely to provide clinically useful information to community hospitals for low-prevalence pathogens.Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol 2018;39:718-722.