Electronic dance music (EDM) festivals represent a unique subset of mass-gathering events with limited guidance through literature or legislation to guide mass-gathering medical care at these events.

Electronic dance music festivals pose unique challenges with increased patient encounters and heightened patient acuity under-estimated by current validated casualty predication models.

This was a retrospective review of three separate EDM festivals with analysis of patient encounters and patient transport rates. Data obtained were inserted into the predictive Arbon and Hartman models to determine estimated patient presentation rate and patient transport rates.

The Arbon model under-predicted the number of patient encounters and the number of patient transports for all three festivals, while the Hartman model under-predicted the number of patient encounters at one festival and over-predicted the number of encounters at the other two festivals. The Hartman model over-predicted patient transport rates for two of the three festivals.

Electronic dance music festivals often involve distinct challenges and current predictive models are inaccurate for planning these events. The formation of a cohesive incident action plan will assist in addressing these challenges and lead to the collection of more uniform data metrics.

FitzGibbonKM, NableJV, AydB, LawnerBJ, ComerAC, LichensteinR, LevyMJ, SeamanKG, BusseyI. Mass-Gathering Medical Care in Electronic Dance Music Festivals. Prehosp Disaster Med. 2017;32(5):563–567.

Antibiograms have effectively improved antibiotic prescribing in acute-care settings; however, their effectiveness in skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) is currently unknown.

To develop SNF-specific antibiograms and identify opportunities to improve antibiotic prescribing.

Cross-sectional and pretest-posttest study among residents of 3 Maryland SNFs.

Antibiograms were created using clinical culture data from a 6-month period in each SNF. We also used admission clinical culture data from the acute care facility primarily associated with each SNF for transferred residents. We manually collected all data from medical charts, and antibiograms were created using WHONET software. We then used a pretest-posttest study to evaluate the effectiveness of an antibiogram on changing antibiotic prescribing practices in a single SNF. Appropriate empirical antibiotic therapy was defined as an empirical antibiotic choice that sufficiently covered the infecting organism, considering antibiotic susceptibilities.

We reviewed 839 patient charts from SNF and acute care facilities. During the initial assessment period, 85% of initial antibiotic use in the SNFs was empirical, and thus only 15% of initial antibiotics were based on culture results. Fluoroquinolones were the most frequently used empirical antibiotics, accounting for 54.5% of initial prescribing instances. Among patients with available culture data, only 35% of empirical antibiotic prescribing was determined to be appropriate. In the single SNF in which we evaluated antibiogram effectiveness, prevalence of appropriate antibiotic prescribing increased from 32% to 45% after antibiogram implementation; however, this was not statistically significant (P = .32).

Implementation of antibiograms may be effective in improving empirical antibiotic prescribing in SNFs.

Hospital readmissions are a current target of initiatives to reduce healthcare costs. This study quantified the association between having a clinical culture positive for 1 of 3 prevalent hospital-associated organisms and time to hospital readmission.

Retrospective cohort study.

Adults admitted to an academic, tertiary care referral center from January 1, 2001, through December 31, 2008.

The primary exposure of interest was a clinical culture positive for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE), or Clostridium difficile obtained more than 48 hours after hospital admission during the index hospital stay. The primary outcome of interest was time to readmission to the index facility. Multivariable Cox proportional hazards models were used to model the adjusted association between positive clinical culture result and time to readmission and to calculate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs).

Among 136,513 index admissions, the prevalence of hospital-associated positive clinical culture result for 1 of the 3 organisms of interest was 3%, and 35% of patients were readmitted to the index facility within 1 year after discharge. Patients with a positive clinical culture obtained more than 48 hours after hospital admission had an increased hazard of readmission (HR, 1.40; 95% CI, 1.33–1.46) after adjusting for age, sex, index admission length of stay, intensive care unit stay, Charlson comorbidity index, and year of hospital admission.

Patients with healthcare-associated infections may be at increased risk of hospital readmission. These findings may be used to impact health outcomes after discharge from the hospital and to encourage better infection prevention efforts.