United Hospital Center Improves Patient Outcomes and Margins by Avoiding False-Positive Blood Cultures

On average, Premier members save $1.9 million by aligning with the new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations to improve patient care.1

Sepsis is the leading cause of death and readmissions in U.S. hospitals and blood cultures remain the gold standard test for the detection of blood stream infections.

Because of the critical role blood cultures have in diagnostic and antibiotic stewardship and patient safety, United Hospital Center (UHC) – a member hospital of West Virginia University Health System (WVU Medicine) – undertook a bold quality improvement project in 2019 to surpass the accepted norm for blood culture contamination rates hospital-wide.

“A patient that receives a false-positive blood culture receives unnecessary antibiotic usage, putting them at risk for antibiotic-associated infections such as C.difficile and complications such as acute kidney injury,” explained Ashley Farley, BSN, RN, CCRN, Clinical Supervisor and Educator, Critical Care at University Hospital Center. “These patients stay in the hospital much longer than they should and that puts them at risk for other hospital-acquired infections (HAIs).”

“We decided as a community of healthcare providers to put an end to this,” said Mark Povroznik, PharmD, Chief Quality Officer and Chairman of Infection Prevention at United Hospital Center. Our goal was to work toward not just reducing the blood culture contamination rates, but reducing them to below 1 percent, and once and for all, overcoming the historic challenges with blood culture collections.”

After failing to sustain a blood culture contamination rate below 3 percent, in 2020, UHC began a pilot study with Premier-contracted supplier Magnolia Medical Technologies utilizing their Steripath® Initial Specimen Diversion Device®2. The Steripath is the only device on the market cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) with the specific indication to reduce blood culture contamination, and that also meets the CDC’s recent recommendations for addressing blood culture contamination. Steripath is designed to reduce blood culture contamination and false-positive test results.

“Magnolia Medical was involved from the very beginning of this endeavor,” said Brenda Conch, MSN, RN, Director of Education at United Hospital Center. “They brought us research, data and information that validated the practice of Steripath and the science behind it. They brought us a crew that stood shoulder-to-shoulder and side-by-side with our practitioners, our nurses, our physicians. They answered questions and watched the actual practice on real-life patients. They gave us tips on how to avoid mistakes and corrected things that might be causing problems. They were there to be sure we’d be successful.”

UHC has proudly achieved its lowest contamination rates (from approximately 4 percent down to .78 percent) and has sustained these results for two years through a combination of best practice education and integration.

Want to learn more? Connect with Dawn Earnest, Premier’s Portfolio Advisor, to explore how your organization could reduce costs related to false-positive blood cultures caused by contamination.

1 Supporting study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30928573/

2 Premier Contract #PP-LA-601 Safety Phlebotomy with Magnolia Medical