2001. Assessment of Real-world Effectiveness of a Rapid Blood Culture Diagnostic Panel at a Veterans Affairs Medical Center

BACKGROUND: Rapid blood culture diagnostics can improve patient outcomes, particularly when paired with robust interventions such as 24/7 stewardship coverage. We sought to determine the clinical impact of a rapid blood culture identification (BCID) panel (BioFire® FilmArray Multiplex PCR) in an established antimicrobial stewardship program (ASP). In addition to clinician education, BCID results were reviewed by the ASP team during weekday business hours, for an average of 2 hours daily based on availability. METHODS: Data on demographics, blood cultures, antimicrobial use, length of stay and mortality were collected on inpatients at the VA North Texas Health Care System with at least one positive blood culture for bacterial or yeast isolates from March 2017 to June 2017 (pre-BCID) and from March 2018 to June 2018 (post-BCID). The primary outcome was a composite of time to optimal therapy from blood culture collection, defined as escalation, de-escalation, discontinuation, or optimization of antimicrobials retrospectively adjudicated based on final culture results. Secondary outcomes included time to effective therapy, total days of therapy (DOT), length of stay, and 30-day mortality and readmission rates. RESULTS: 195 patients were screened with 130 patients included in the study. No significant differences in baseline characteristics were observed between groups (Table 1). Sixty-one patients were included in the pre-BCID arm and 69 in the post-BCID arm. Median time to optimal therapy was 82.9 hours (IQR; 12.8–99.8) in the pre-BCID arm and 33.9 hours (IQR; 11.2–64.8) in the post-BCID arm (P = 0.005) (Table 2). No significant change in 30-day mortality or 30-day readmission rates was noted. Vancomycin DOT was 4 days (IQR; 2–5) and 3 days (IQR; 1–4) (P = 0.024), and piperacillin–tazobactam DOT was 4 (IQR; 0–5) and 2 (IQR; 0–4) (P = 0.043), in the pre-BCID and post-BCID groups, respectively (Figure 1). CONCLUSION: Introduction of BCID into the daily workflow of our ASP resulted in a significant reduction in time to optimal therapy for bloodstream infections. DOT for select broad-spectrum antibiotics were also significantly reduced. This study highlights the potential benefit of rapid diagnostics without negative impact to patient care even in settings without resources for 24/7 ASP review. [Image: see text] [Image: see text] [Image: see text] DISCLOSURES: All authors: No reported disclosures.