Process for Delivering Timely Antibiotics to Febrile Bone Marrow Transplant Patients in the Emergency Department

Patients with a history of a bone marrow transplant (BMT) have a higher risk of infectious complications because of an immunocompromised state. It has been shown that giving timely antibiotics in 1 hour or less from presentation to the emergency department (ED) decreases morbidity and mortality in this patient population. We hypothesize that a quality improvement (QI) process, termed BMT Fever, will improve timely administration of antibiotics for this population presenting to the ED.

This is a QI process designed to improve the administration of antibiotics to BMT patients with a subjective or objective fever presenting to the ED. The percent of patients receiving antibiotics within 1 hour or less was compared pre- and post-intervention.

Upon implementation of the BMT Fever QI process, the percentage of patients with febrile BMT receiving antibiotics within 1 hour or less per fiscal quarter significantly improved from six out of 28 patients (21%) to 147 out of 173 patients (85%), P value < .05.

By implementing a QI process that addresses five structural obstacles, we were able to improve our timely administration of antibiotics to patients with febrile BMT presenting to the ED.