Antimicrobial management in community acquired pneumonia in hospital at home: Is there room for improvement?

Introduction: Community Acquired Pneumonia (CAP) is common disease that can be treated in Hospital At Home (HAH). In this paper we evaluate the room of improvement in the use of antibiotics in CAP in HH.
Methods: Patients with CAP were retrospectively recruited in two Spanish hospitals from 1/1/18 to 10/30/19. Demographic, clinical and quality of antibiotic prescription variables were recorded. Subsequently, we created a new variable that collected six quality of care indicator, categorizing and comparing patients into two groups: good quality of care (4 or more indicators performed) or poor quality of care (3 or less indicators performed).
Results: We recruited 260 patients. The request for diagnostic tests and the adequacy to Clinical Practice Guidelines were 85.4% and 85.8% respectively. Percentages of de-escalation (53.7%) and sequential therapy (57.7%) when indicated were low. The average length of treatment was 7.3 days for intravenous and 9.5 days for total. Quality of prescription was good in 134 (63.2%) patients, being more frequent in those who were admitted directly to HAD from the emergency room. It was also associated with less readmission at 30 days.
Conclusion: There is a wide room for improvement in some fields of antimicrobials use in HAH that could stimulate the implementation of Antimicrobial Stewardship Programs.
(Copyright © 2020 Sociedad Española de Enfermedades Infecciosas y Microbiología Clínica. Published by Elsevier España, S.L.U. All rights reserved.)