To evaluate the impact of changes to urine testing orderables in computerized physician order entry (CPOE) system on urine culturing practices.

Retrospective before-and-after study.

A 1,250-bed academic tertiary-care referral center.

Hospitalized adults who had ≥1 urine culture performed during their stay.

The intervention (implemented in April 2017) consisted of notifications to providers, changes to order sets, and inclusion of the new urine culture reflex tests in commonly used order sets. We compared the urine culture rates before the intervention (January 2015 to April 2016) and after the intervention (May 2016 to August 2017), adjusting for temporal trends.

During the study period, 18,954 inpatients (median age, 62 years; 68.8% white and 52.3% female) had 24,569 urine cultures ordered. Overall, 6,662 urine cultures (27%) were positive. The urine culturing rate decreased significantly in the postintervention period for any specimen type (38.1 per 1,000 patient days preintervention vs 20.9 per 1,000 patient days postintervention; P < .001), clean catch (30.0 vs 18.7; P < .001) and catheterized urine (7.8 vs 1.9; P < .001). Using an interrupted time series model, urine culture rates decreased for all specimen types (P < .05).

Our intervention of changes to order sets and inclusion of the new urine culture reflex tests resulted in a 45% reduction in the urine cultures ordered. CPOE system format plays a vital role in reducing the burden of unnecessary urine cultures and should be implemented in combination with other efforts.

We aimed to determine the frequency of qacA/B chlorhexidine tolerance genes and high-level mupirocin resistance among MRSA isolates before and after the introduction of a chlorhexidine (CHG) daily bathing intervention in a surgical intensive care unit (SICU).

Retrospective cohort study (2005–2012)

A large tertiary-care center

Patients admitted to SICU who had MRSA surveillance cultures of the anterior nares

A random sample of banked MRSA anterior nares isolates recovered during (2005) and after (2006–2012) implementation of a daily CHG bathing protocol was examined for qacA/B genes and high-level mupirocin resistance. Staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec) typing was also performed.

Of the 504 randomly selected isolates (63 per year), 36 (7.1%) were qacA/B positive (+) and 35 (6.9%) were mupirocin resistant. Of these, 184 (36.5%) isolates were SCCmec type IV. There was a significant trend for increasing qacA/B (P=.02; highest prevalence, 16.9% in 2009 and 2010) and SCCmec type IV (P<.001; highest prevalence, 52.4% in 2012) during the study period. qacA/B(+) MRSA isolates were more likely to be mupirocin resistant (9 of 36 [25%] qacA/B(+) vs 26 of 468 [5.6%] qacA/B(−); P=.003).

A long-term, daily CHG bathing protocol was associated with a change in the frequency of qacA/B genes in MRSA isolates recovered from the anterior nares over an 8-year period. This change in the frequency of qacA/B genes is most likely due to patients in those years being exposed in prior admissions. Future studies need to further evaluate the implications of universal CHG daily bathing on MRSA qacA/B genes among hospitalized patients.

Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol 2016;37:590–597