CDC to Track Hospital Antibiotic Use

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has launched an antibiotic tracking system to enable hospitals to monitor antibiotic use.

The tracking system is a new part of the agency's National Healthcare Safety Network to monitor infections in health care treatment facilities. Hospitals on the network can work with their pharmacy software vendor to transmit antibiotic data electronically, without manual intervention, from administration or bar coding records. A list of pharmacy vendors working with CDC is available on the Society for Infectious Disease Pharmacists' Web site at sidp.org.

Use of the antibiotic tracking system can help hospitals better understand utilization and patterns of use, and compare their performance with others, according to the CDS. More information is available at cdc.gov/nhsn/psc_ma.html.