Efficacy of a Multicenter Hospital Network's Approach to Enacting Blood Culture Stewardship During a Global Shortage

Open Forum Infect Dis. 2025 May 16;12(6):ofaf294. doi: 10.1093/ofid/ofaf294. eCollection 2025 Jun.

Abstract

The recent global blood culture bottle shortage forced hospitals to implement new diagnostic stewardship programs. In this brief report, we describe our approach as a multicenter hospital network through a system-wide memorandum and the implementation of a best practice advisory, which decreased the use of blood cultures without negatively affecting the sepsis-related mortality rate.

Keywords: blood culture bottles; blood cultures; diagnostic stewardship; sepsis; supply shortage.