The Importance of Outpatient Stewardship for Health System Pharmacists

Lisa Dumkow, PharmD, BCIDP, a clinical pharmacist of antimicrobial stewardship, discusses outpatient stewardship and why it's vital for health system pharmacists. This video was filmed at the 2019 ASHP Midyear Meeting Clinical Meeting & Exhibition in Las Vegas.

Lisa Dumkow, PharmD, BCIDP: Outpatient stewardship is incredibly important for health system pharmacists, as well as ambulatory care pharmacists, because of a few reasons. First and foremost is that the joint commission is going to be requiring ambulatory care stewardship starting in January of 2020. So from a regulatory standpoint, and just a quality standpoint, that’s incredibly important for pharmacists to know about. And then the other important reason is that more than 50% of antibiotics are prescribed in the ambulatory care setting. Family care providers prescribe more than 60% of our antibiotics. That’s important for us, as a target to implement and improve antibiotic prescribing.