The Center for Medicare Services (CMS) announced the final ruling of the updated Public Health and Clinical Data Exchange Objective, which adds the AUR measure to the 4 required reporting domains starting with the CY 2024 reporting period. The CDC prioritizes AU tracking and reporting to NHSN to achieve compliance with the core elements of hospital ASP. A SAAR, Standardized Antimicrobial Administration Ratio, is a summary measure of antimicrobial use (AU) for hospitals in the AU Option of the National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) Antimicrobial Use and Resistance (AUR) Module. NHSN originally developed the metric as a quantitative tool for hospitals to make comparisons of AU within and across facilities to help guide antimicrobial stewardship efforts. Pease join the KHA Quality team for a brief presentation in which we will discuss the updates in KQC, including what the measures entail, the CMS definitions of them, and the process for enrolling your hospital in these measures to report the data.

Targeted Audience:
Quality leaders and All hospital or healthcare organization leaders responsible for quality data entry include but not limited to: Pharmacy leaders, Physician leaders, Infectious Disease Pharmacists

Featured Speakers:
Jessica Covington, PharmD, BCPS graduated from the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy with a Doctor of Pharmacy in 2003, then obtained Board Certification in Pharmacotherapy in 2017. Her expertise includes direct patient care in acute care hospitals and long-term care as a clinical pharmacist. Covington works as a Quality Program Pharmacist at Kentucky Hospital Association (KHA) providing support for the Kentucky Hospital Research and Education Foundation (KHREF) quality program and initiatives. She assists the quality team in reducing rates of preventable harm through promotion of best practice.

Quality Improvement Areas include but not limited to: Adverse Drug Events, Antibiotic Stewardship, C. Difficile, Sepsis, Readmissions, Venous Thromboembolism Prophylaxis

Shafrin Choudhury, MPH, joined the Kentucky Hospital Association in 2021 as a Quality Improvement Data Analyst. In 2014, she received her Bachelor’s of Science in Biology from Centre College and later pursued her Master’s in Public Health, concentrating in Biostatistics in 2018. She has over 7 years of experience working with health care data in different capacities and continues to pursue her passion of helping patients through the use of data analysis and the ultimate goal of improving quality.

Please contact Tammy Wells for more information.