Antibiotic Stewardship in Acute Care Playbook 

Antibiotics are powerful drugs to treat serious infections. However, decades of overprescribing and misuse have resulted in bacteria that are increasingly resistant to these potent drugs, creating a growing threat of new superbugs that are difficult, and sometimes even impossible, to treat. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), drug-resistant bacteria cause two million illnesses and 23,000 deaths annually. National Quality Forum’s National Quality Partners (NQP) convened more than 25 experts and national stakeholders from the public and private sectors—including patient advocates, infectious disease physicians and pharmacists, and acute-care providers—to provide input into the NQP Playbook™: Antibiotic Stewardship in Acute Care. This Fact Sheet provides a preview of the NQP Playbook™, which is designed to help hospitals and health systems strengthen existing antibiotic stewardship initiatives or create antibiotic stewardship programs from the ground up.