Stopping Blood Culture Contaminations
Topic of Interest
CNS Improving Outcomes
Abstract
Contaminated blood cultures increase costs and potentially expose patients to unnecessary antibiotics. This places the patient at risk for complications such as C. difficile infections.
Current practices were reviewed compared to evidence based practices. An ongoing process improvement project for blood culture contamination reduction was implemented. Evidence based and best practices were implemented with ongoing evaluation against monthly blood culture contamination reports. The key intervention identified is the use of a plain red top waste tube cleaned with alcohol prior to blood culture draw.
The contamination rate went from greater than 3% to less than 2% overall, resulting in an approximate $300,000 cost avoidance.
Identifying processes to decrease blood culture contamination has been a long standing initiative in healthcare. In recent years there has been a focus on diverting the first 2-3 mL of blood using proprietary blood draw products that would have a significant increase in cost at approximately $10 plus per blood culture draw. Utilization of a plain red top tube and alcohol pad increases cost only by approximately 10 cents per blood culture draw. This new process has shown to significantly impact the reduction of blood culture contamination rates while being cost effective.