UTSW, Clements University Hospital named Antimicrobial Stewardship Center of Excellence

Newswise — DALLAS – June 13, 2023 – UT Southwestern Medical Center and its William P. Clements Jr. University Hospital have been named an Antimicrobial Stewardship Center of Excellence by the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), recognizing a commitment to reducing infections caused by antimicrobial resistance.

“Our UT Southwestern Antimicrobial Stewardship Team (SWAT), led by James Cutrell, M.D., is an integral piece of our overall mission to provide high-quality patient care in the safest manner possible, and its members have the full backing and support of institutional leadership,” said William Daniel, M.D., M.B.A., Vice President for Health System Affairs and Chief Quality Officer at UT Southwestern. “The team’s collective experience and expertise provide key guidance on antimicrobial use for our patients and have led to a proven track record of success that is deserving of the Center of Excellence designation from the IDSA.”

Antimicrobial resistance to antibiotics is an urgent global public health threat. Just in the U.S., more than 2.8 million antibiotic resistant infections occur every year, killing more than 35,000 people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although antimicrobial resistance can occur as a natural phenomenon, the growing increase in resistance over the last several decades has largely resulted from improper use of antibiotics, Dr. Daniel explained.

To help combat this problem, UTSW’s SWAT program has instituted a variety of measures. These include:

• Campus-wide education for prescribers and other health care professionals including a comprehensive antibiotic stewardship program website, a monthly SWAT newsletter, and annual Antibiotic Awareness Week educational activities.
• Prior authorization and post-prescriptive audit and review of select high-risk antimicrobials.
• Collaboration with key stakeholders to develop and maintain antimicrobial order sets for targeted conditions leading to improvements in, for example, sepsis mortality and colorectal surgical site infections.
• Initiation of a pharmacist-led protocol to help improve empiric antibiotic treatments in patients admitted with pneumonia.
• Development, ongoing maintenance, and education for providers on COVID-19 management protocols for inpatient and outpatient therapeutics, contributing to lower mortality for admitted COVID-19 patients compared to national benchmarks.
• Ongoing quality improvement initiative to reduce hospital-associated infections from Clostridioides difficile (C. diff), a common infection caused by antibiotic overuse, as a key patient safety goal for UTSW’s Health System.

Several members of UTSW’s SWAT program have received advanced training in antibiotic stewardship, Dr. Daniel added. In addition, the SWAT program provides ongoing education and training for the institution and spearheads key program initiatives.

“It is truly an honor for our stewardship program to be recognized as a Center of Excellence by the IDSA, and it reflects the amazing team that we have — including my physician partner, Dr. Christina Yen, our Infectious Diseases pharmacists led by Drs. James Sanders, Esther Bae, and Marguerite Monogue, and our nurse coordinator, Tyla Carettini. They are the true engines who make our program so successful,” said Dr. Cutrell, Associate Professor in Internal Medicine and Program Director of the Infectious Diseases Fellowship Program.

Six other institutions were also named Centers of Excellence, bringing to 163 the number of medical centers that have received the designation since IDSA launched the program in 2017.

According to the IDSA, its core criteria for the Center of Excellence program place emphasis on an institution’s ability to implement stewardship protocols by integrating best practices to slow the emergence of resistance, optimize the treatment of infections, reduce adverse events associated with antibiotic use, and address other challenging areas related to antimicrobial stewardship. A panel of IDSA member experts in antimicrobial stewardship, including infectious disease-trained physicians and pharmacists, evaluate Center of Excellence applications against high-level criteria established by the IDSA leadership for determining merit.

Dr. Daniel is the William T. Solomon Professor in Clinical Quality Improvement at UT Southwestern Medical Center.

About UT Southwestern Medical Center
UT Southwestern, one of the nation’s premier academic medical centers, integrates pioneering biomedical research with exceptional clinical care and education. The institution’s faculty has received six Nobel Prizes, and includes 26 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 19 members of the National Academy of Medicine, and 14 Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigators. The full-time faculty of more than 2,900 is responsible for groundbreaking medical advances and is committed to translating science-driven research quickly to new clinical treatments. UT Southwestern physicians provide care in more than 80 specialties to more than 100,000 hospitalized patients, more than 360,000 emergency room cases, and oversee nearly 4 million outpatient visits a year.