Managing Patients at High Risk for Antibiotic-resistant Infections

John D'Angelo, MD, senior vice president, executive director of Emergency Medicine Services at Northwell Health, describes how hospital clinicians can identify and treat patients at highest risk for contracting antibiotic-resistant infections.

Interview Transcript (slightly modified for readability)

“There are screenings that are done, swabs on admitted patients that are at higher risk, to identify folks so that you could stop the spread [of these antibiotic-resistant pathogens], but with the folks living in nursing homes, with all [of that] there’s a lot of opportunity for these things to spread and we just have to be aware when folks have the various, whether it’s MRSA or Vancomycin-resistant enterococcus or things of that nature, we have to be aware, and cohort them appropriately and use the appropriate precautions to keep it from spreading.

What we also do is, we keep in our electronic medical record, that history, once we know [that] they have it and then the subsequent visits will be flagged and the precautions can start much earlier in their encounter in subsequent visits. We don’t take them off of that flagging process until we’ve had several documented negative screens in the future.”