5.3 Summary reports on a periodic basis

As well as reporting individual results to clinicians, laboratories should also provide regular reports to the hospital administration and relevant hospital teams and committees. These could include diagnostic stewardship committees, infection control, AMS or drugs and therapeutic committees, or individual departments where AMR is a particular concern such as ICU.

Reporting laboratory results on a regular basis – monthly, for example – has several functions:

• It will provide information on changing patterns of AMR and pathogen incidence in the hospital and locally, which can inform treatment of patients. For example, if resistance to a particular drug is increasing, clinicians will try to avoid using this antimicrobial if alternatives are available. Regular reporting means that the hospital can identify increasing resistance, and formulate and regularly update hospital empirical treatment guidelines.
• It may show new patterns of infection or AMR that require action to prevent an outbreak, such as testing for carriage of a specific AMR organism and increased infection control measures.
• It can be used to monitor the performance of diagnostic stewardship at the facility, and allows a diagnostic stewardship committee to identify performance issues and action areas.