Pneumonia: timely test for type of infection

Pneumonia treatment guidelines recommend blood cultures for all inpatients to ensure optimal therapy. Improved survival has been associated with optimal therapy. The blood culture results are the most useful when the blood is drawn before the first dose of antibiotics. A higher rate may indicate that a hospital provides a higher level of patient care.

About this measure

This measure tracks the percent of pneumonia patients who had blood taken for a blood culture in the emergency room before they were given the first dose of antibiotics in the hospital.

Northwestern Memorial Hospital wants to provide the most up to date data. For this measure, our data is from a more recent time period than the benchmark time period.

Note: In this case, a higher number is better.