1075. The Impact of Physician Peer Comparison of a Novel Inpatient Antimicrobial Stewardship Metric: the Start-Stop Ratio (SSR)

BACKGROUND: The 48-hour “Antibiotic Timeout” (ATO), one of the CDC’s interventions defined in the Core Elements of Antimicrobial Stewardship Programs (ASP), has not reliably proven to impact inpatient antibiotic use. Given the reported history of utilizing peer-comparison data to change prescribing behavior, it was hypothesized that open disclosure of individual inpatient antibiotic start-stop ratios (SSR) would be an effective tool to increase prescribers’ tendency to (1) observe patients off antibiotics upon admission while pursuing treatments perceived more likely to provide syndromic resolution and (2) discontinue antibiotics in the setting of diagnostic uncertainty at 48 hours, or possibly even earlier, without introducing harm. METHODS: In a community, nonteaching hospital, all adult systemic antibiotic orders initiated by an inpatient hospitalist with at least one administration during the baseline period of January - March of 2018 were retrieved. A prescriber-specific count of all antibiotic orders (“starts”) and discontinuations (“stops”) was collected. Each provider received a document with their baseline SSR compared with the group SSR and was assigned a visual cue that corresponded to the quartile in which they performed at baseline. The same antibiotic data were then collected and evaluated for the post-intervention period of February–April 2019 to determine whether open disclosure of inpatient SSRs impacted antibiotic prescribing. RESULTS: Of 19 providers that were included in both study periods, there was no significant difference in the pre- and post-intervention SSR (1.93 to 2.09, P = 0.19). However, in the pre-intervention high-ratio target group (n = 10) for whom we felt open SSR reporting would impact the most, the SSR decreased from 2.41 to 2.26 (P = 0.24). In the entire study population, 68% of providers had a reduction or no change in their SSR. Overall facility-wide antibiotic utilization decreased from 561 to 478 days of therapy per 1,000 days present (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: Open reporting of antibiotic SSRs to an inpatient provider group may be utilized as an ASP tool to reduce overall inpatient antibiotic consumption, especially by providers that are found to be high-ratio prescribers at baseline. [Image: see text] [Image: see text] [Image: see text] [Image: see text] DISCLOSURES: All authors: No reported disclosures.