The clinical microbiology lab at Health Sciences North, a hospital in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, recently implemented integrated blood culture and ID and AST solutions from bioMérieux, based on BACT/ALERT® VIRTUO®, VITEK® MS and VITEK® 2. Clinical Microbiologist Dr. Danielle Brabant-Kirwan shared their experience in an article appearing in Practical Patient Care. Here’s a preview of what she had to say:
ON… Productivity
“We’ve considerably reduced the time it takes to report ID and AST as well as negative blood cultures.”
“We have been able to re-allocate our resources, increase productivity and increase our in-house testing menu.”
ON… How lab efficiency impacts patient care
“Alerting the physician that their patient’s blood cultures are positive several hours earlier than previously can greatly improve patient care outcomes. Proper antibiotics can be administered in a timely fashion and then appropriately de-escalated.”
ON… Improving Antimicrobial Stewardship
“Strategic and selective culture and AST reporting, as well as our interpretative comments, helps clinicians better understand the culture results for proper antimicrobial prescribing.”
“We regularly do a lot of data mining to be proactive in identifying trends and resistance patterns in bacteria.”
