Assessing the Clinical Wellbeing of SSTI Patients

Michael D. Nailor, PharmD, BCPS-AQ ID, clinical associate professor at the University of Connecticut School of Pharmacy, clinical specialist in infectious diseases at Hartford Hospital, and director of Infectious Disease Residency program at Hartford Hospital, explains how his research can assess clinical well-being of patients with skin and soft tissue infections.

Interview Transcript (slightly modified for readability)

“What we’ve already done is we’ve created an algorithm for patients who get admitted to the hospital for empiric therapy for the treatment of skin and soft tissue infections, of a whole variety of types. We’ve also instituted some guidelines for early discharge, based off of early clinical progress in treating the disease, as well as an early follow-up visit with an [infectious disease healthcare] provider within 2 to 3 days, post-discharge; we know that discharge period is good.

That early clinic visit with an infectious disease [healthcare] provider will help assess if the patient is still clinically improving, [whether the patient was] able to get medicine, and [if the patient is] having any side effects [to] medicines, or is there another clinical problem that might have put [the patient] at risk for getting admitted to the [hospital] in the first place, that still needs to be worked out in the outpatient setting. Hopefully that last piece of stewardship will help reduce readmission [rates] both to the emergency department as well as back within the hospital.”