A Quality Improvement Initiative to Improve Adherence to National Guidelines for Empiric Management of Community-acquired Pneumonia in Emergency Departments

Objective: The objective of this study was to improve the concordance of community-acquired pneumonia management in Australian emergency departments with national guidelines through a quality improvement initiative promoting concordant antibiotic use and use of a pneumonia severity assessment tool, the pneumonia severity index (PSI).

Design: and

Interventions: Drug use evaluation, a quality improvement methodology involving data collection, evaluation, feedback and education, was undertaken. Educational interventions included academic detailing, group feedback presentations and prescribing prompts.

Setting And Participants: Data were collected on 20 consecutive adult community-acquired pneumonia emergency department presentations by each hospital for each of three audits.

Main Outcome Measures: Two process indicators measured the impact of the interventions: documented PSI use and concordance of antibiotic prescribing with guidelines. Comparisons were performed using a Chi-squared test.

Results: Thirty-seven hospitals, including public, private, rural and metropolitan institutions, participated. Twenty-six hospitals completed the full study (range: 462-518 patients), incorporating two intervention phases and subsequent follow-up audits. The baseline audit of community-acquired pneumonia management demonstrated that practice was varied and mostly discordant with guidelines. Documented PSI use subsequently improved from 30/518 (6%, 95% confidence interval [CI] 4-8) at baseline to 125/503 (25%, 95% CI 21-29; P < 0.0001) and 102/462 (22%, 95% CI 18-26; P < 0.0001) in audits two and three, respectively, while concordant antibiotic prescribing improved from 101/518 (20%, 95% CI 16-23) to 132/462 (30%, 95% CI 26-34; P < 0.0001) and 132/462 (29%, 95% CI 24-33; P < 0.001), respectively.

Conclusions: Improved uptake of guideline recommendations for community-acquired pneumonia management in emergency departments was documented following a multi-faceted education intervention.