A 5-day antibiotic stewardship target for uncomplicated community-acquired pneumonia.

Introduction: Antibiotic overuse in community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) persists despite guidelines recommending 5-day treatment for uncomplicated cases. Our pilot quality improvement study aimed to address this problem via an antibiotic stewardship initiative. Methods: Adults admitted to a tertiary care center with uncomplicated CAP were identified using database query and manual chart review, with exclusions for intensive care needs, lack of clinical improvement, or concurrent infections. A 3-month baseline period was compared to a 3-month post-intervention period after provider-targeted interventions were implemented-in-person and email-based provider education on eligibility for the 5-day antibiotic course and pharmacist-driven outreach on day 3 of treatment to encourage guideline-based prescribing. Mean antibiotic duration was compared using Mann-Whitney test. The primary goal was to decrease antibiotic overuse by 25%. Results: Of 647 baseline patients, 222 met criteria with a mean antibiotic duration of 6.75 ± 1.75 days. After the interventions, 170 of 570 patients met criteria with a reduced antibiotic duration of 6.24 ± 1.47 days ( Conclusions: Our pilot study showed that a provider-focused pharmacist-driven strategy can reduce unnecessary antibiotic use in uncomplicated CAP. The intervention encouraged shorter, guideline-driven courses and reduced antibiotic overuse by 28.7%, meeting our primary goal of 25% reduction. Nevertheless, there are opportunities for further improvement in guideline adherence through enhanced discharge prescription stewardship, documentation accuracy checks, and continued provider education.