How antibiograms guide efficient, effective antibiotic use and improve patient outcomes

As antibiotic resistance continues to rise, healthcare organizations face increasing pressure to obtain actionable data to track trends and guide effective treatment. By leveraging up-to-date resistance data, providers can make more targeted treatment decisions, reduce ineffective prescribing that may lead to unnecessary side effects and potentially preserve the long-term effectiveness of antibiotics.

One emerging trend that’s becoming an invaluable tool for organizations to track local and community-level antimicrobial resistance patterns is the antibiogram.

Understanding antibiogram reports: Process and nuances

An antibiogram serves as a critical snapshot of antibiotic susceptibility patterns in a specific geographic area or healthcare facility. They’re developed using various components of data on bacterial isolates recovered from patient blood, urine or tissue samples that test positive for infection.

After the exact bacteria causing the infection is identified, each sample is tested against different antibiotics in the lab to see which ones stop the bacteria from growing. The compiled data shows the percentage of each organism interpreted as susceptible (killed or inhibited at concentrations relevant for treatment) to listed antimicrobial agents based on the Clinical Laboratory Standards Institute-recommended breakpoints.

This aggregated data is then presented clearly in a table organized by bacteria on one axis and specific antibiotics on the other. This allows the antibiogram to supplement guideline-driven infectious disease treatment protocols to aid in the selection of the most effective empiric antibiotics in your local or geographical region.

Using local resistance data to guide empiric prescribing

As ambulatory and outpatient care providers face increasing pressure to treat infections quickly and effectively, the need for knowledge-based empiric prescribing is more critical than ever. While definitive treatment decisions should be based on pharmacodynamics and established clinical standards, organizations can strengthen their approach by developing empiric treatment guidelines informed by robust local data trends. 

These tools don’t dictate specific drug choices but rather: 

• Serve as a crucial cross-reference
• Validate current empiric choices
• Detect when a drug may no longer align with the prevailing community infectious ecosystem

This data-driven approach helps providers of ambulatory infection care remain proactive, responsive and aligned with emerging patterns in antibiotic resistance.

Consider urinary tract infections, a common condition frequently treated in outpatient settings. While national clinical guidelines may recommend a specific first-line antibiotic, an ambulatory practice clinician can use a local antibiogram to predict the likely effectiveness of their empiric antibiotic choice against the most prevalent uropathogens in their specific region.

If the antibiogram indicates inadequate susceptibility for the recommended antibiotic, the clinician may want to reevaluate the national protocol. This intersection of clinical best practices and real-world data assists treatment in remaining both clinically sound and responsive to evolving trends—ultimately leading to better patient outcomes and reduced healthcare costs.

Antibiograms are driving smarter prescribing and stronger lab stewardship

One of the most significant contributions of antibiograms lies in their foundational role in antimicrobial stewardship programs. These programs are designed to optimize antibiotic use to improve patient outcomes, reduce antibiotic resistance, assist in determining the formulary and decrease unnecessary costs.

The economic benefits of robust antimicrobial stewardship informed by detailed antibiogram data are substantial and multifaceted:

• Reduced length of stay. Effective empiric therapy guided by local susceptibility data leads to faster resolution of infections, reducing the need for prolonged hospitalization
• Lower treatment costs. By enabling the selection of frequently less expensive antibiotics when appropriate, antibiograms help optimize pharmaceutical expenditures and reduce reliance on costly broad-spectrum agents
• Decreased healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). Prudent antibiotic use reduces risk of HAIs, including Clostridioides difficile infections, which carry significant morbidity, mortality and associated treatment costs
• Improved quality metrics and reimbursement. In value-based care models, improved patient outcomes, reduced readmissions due to treatment failure and lower rates of complications directly translate to enhanced quality metrics and favorable reimbursement structures.
• Optimized resource utilization. Fewer treatment failures mean fewer follow-up visits, diagnostic tests and interventions, leading to more efficient allocation of healthcare resources

By providing detailed insights into local bacterial resistance patterns, antibiograms allow multidisciplinary antimicrobial stewardship teams to develop tailored, effective usage protocols, enabling judicious and appropriate antibiotic use within a specific healthcare setting.

This targeted approach to antibiotic use based on current susceptibility data helps prevent the development and spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, safeguarding both individual patient health and broader public health, all while contributing to the financial health of the organization.

Antibiogram case study: Novant Health and Labcorp

Labcorp’s extensive laboratory data provides a powerful lens for identifying antimicrobial susceptibility and resistance trends, helping antimicrobial stewardship teams make more informed decisions for strategic interventions. Community-level antibiograms, powered by our vast testing footprint of over 700 million annual tests and data from more than half of the U.S. population offer an unparalleled public health view into real-world resistance patterns.

Our community and ambulatory data aggregates antimicrobial susceptibility results across multiple care settings and geographic areas, offering a comprehensive view of community-level outpatient trends. This broad perspective helps stewardship teams track local and regional susceptibility and resistance patterns and develop or refine empiric antibiotic treatment protocols that truly reflect current epidemiological realities.

The partnership between Novant Health and Labcorp demonstrates the impact of antibiograms in practice. Novant Health, a not-for-profit integrated healthcare network with over 900 locations and 19 hospitals serving over five million patients, strategically leverages Labcorp’s antibiogram reports to strengthen its comprehensive antimicrobial stewardship efforts.

Through its ambulatory stewardship program, Novant Health regularly reviews Labcorp data to track regional trends and adapt recommendations in real time. The ability to filter reports by location is critical, as it assists statewide data in accurately reflecting local susceptibility patterns and highlights regional differences for providers.

Granular susceptibility data has also supported the inclusion of targeted antibiotics, such as cephalexin for urinary tract infections in Novant’s treatment guidelines. Furthermore, Labcorp’s antibiogram data is distributed directly to providers in a report formatted by the antimicrobial stewardship team, making sure prescribers across the network have the most current information at the point of care.

Together, Novant Health and Labcorp are setting a new standard for how health systems can transform laboratory data into actionable insights that drive smarter prescribing, reduce resistance and advance public health across entire regions, yielding both clinical and economic benefits.