1157. GET IT OUT! Nurses and Clinical Quality Improvement Specialists Drive Initiative to Reduce Standardized Utilization Ratios for Indwelling Urinary Catheters in Hospitalized Patients

BACKGROUND: Urinary tract infections (UTIs) account for 34% of all healthcare-associated infections (HAI). Urinary catheters (UC) are placed in 15–25% of hospitalized patients and >75% of HAI UTIs are UC-related. Bacteria introduced via UC can colonize the bladder within 3 days. So, the greatest risk factor for acquiring a catheter-associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI) is prolonged use of indwelling UC. Nursing (RN) staff noted inconsistency with appropriate use of UC and commonly UC remained in place well after their original indication had expired. METHODS: As part of a multi-faceted approach for quality improvement and patient safety, we rolled out an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)-based initiative to reduce UC days/Standardized Utilization Ratio (SUR). Daily critical reviews of the indication for UC were conducted by two groups. First, frontline night shift RN staff identified patients who no longer had a valid justification for continued UC. They handed-off the information to day-shift RNs, who recommend removal of UC during daily rounds with the physician teams. A second review was performed by Clinical Quality Improvement Specialists (CQIS) based on defined criteria from our nursing decatheterization protocol. Their discontinue UC recommendations were also sent to the care teams. The critical reviews of UC for CAUTI reduction started with 4 ICUs in August 2018, with additional ICUs added in December, January and March. Monthly UC SURs were tracked RESULTS: Figure 1 shows the number of UCs recommended for removal by RNs vs. CQIS (bars), as well as the percent discordance between RNs and CQIS (line). CQIS identified many more removable UCs than the RNs (888 vs. 256). 211 UC were removed after RN recommendations, and an additional 386 UCs were removed as a result of the CQIS audits. Figure 2 shows the marked corresponding decline in our SUR over this intervention. CONCLUSION: As more units participated in the initiative, we saw increasing numbers of “discontinue UC” recommendations. Over time there was also a moderate decrease in the discordance between RN and CQIS recommendations for UC removal. CQIS routinely identified many more UCs to be removed compared with RNs, and more than doubled the number of discontinued UC. Notably, the UC SUR markedly improved, decreasing from 0.98 to 0.78. [Image: see text] [Image: see text] DISCLOSURES: All authors: No reported disclosures.