Antibiogram software for MEDITECH hospitals, what Expanse, the Data Repository and a separate tool each give you
MEDITECH sells a stewardship toolkit and a surveillance product, and neither page mentions the cumulative antibiogram. That leaves the annual report to a SQL query, a spreadsheet or both. Here are the realistic routes and what each costs.
8 min read
A MEDITECH hospital can get a cumulative antibiogram three ways: a standard or custom report from the laboratory and microbiology data, a SQL report written against the MEDITECH Data Repository, or a separate antibiogram tool fed by a susceptibility export. MEDITECH's Antimicrobial Stewardship Toolkit and MEDITECH Surveillance cover alerts, tracking boards and prescribing workflow; their public pages do not describe an antibiogram. So the report usually lands on whoever can write SQL, or on the pharmacist with a spreadsheet.
This is written for the stewardship pharmacist, pharmacy director or lab manager at a MEDITECH hospital, often a community or critical access hospital, who needs a defensible antibiogram each year and has no analyst assigned to it. MEDITECH is described only from its own public pages and published partner material.
What MEDITECH covers for stewardship, and what it leaves to you
MEDITECH describes its Antimicrobial Stewardship Toolkit as evidence-based content designed with Expanse technology, aligned with CDC's Core Elements of Hospital Antibiotic Stewardship Programs and with Public Health Ontario strategies. It combines clinical decision support and surveillance: algorithms that flag patients at key points in antibiotic therapy, alerts to clinicians, and notifications on status boards. MEDITECH publishes a case study from NMC Health in Newton, Kansas, an early adopter.
MEDITECH Surveillance, the product the toolkit relies on, uses evidence-based rules to find patients who meet criteria for CLABSI, CAUTI and other hospital-acquired conditions and populates tracking boards. That is patient-level, real-time work. A cumulative antibiogram is the opposite kind of output: a year of first isolates, de-duplicated and summarized by organism and drug. Neither product page mentions one: the toolkit runs the daily work, and the antibiogram stays a separate job.
The Data Repository route, and why it stalls
The MEDITECH Data Repository copies application data into Microsoft SQL Server so hospitals can write their own reports. Microbiology results are in it, which means an antibiogram is technically a query away. The problem is who writes the query. Acmeware, a MEDITECH reporting firm that has built custom Data Repository reports since 1998, says it directly on its own site: building those reports requires deep familiarity with the Data Repository schema and strong SQL Server skills, most hospital IT teams carry a persistent backlog, and stakeholders wait weeks or months for reports.
An antibiogram query is also harder than it looks. It has to keep the first isolate per patient per organism in the period, suppress percentages under 30 isolates, handle intermediate results and organisms tested only on request, and apply the right breakpoint version. When the report writer leaves, those rules leave with them, and the next year's numbers change for reasons nobody can explain to the P and T committee.
If your team does maintain Data Repository reports, a data lineage view of which tables and fields a report actually reads makes the annual validation much faster, especially after an Expanse upgrade moves where microbiology results land.
Antibiogram routes for a MEDITECH hospital, side by side
| Route | Who builds and maintains it | M39 first isolate and suppression | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard lab or microbiology report | Lab staff, as configured at go-live | Depends on configuration; check it | No new license |
| Custom Data Repository SQL report | IT report writers, on their queue | Whatever the specification says | No new license, analyst weeks |
| Outsourced Data Repository report | A MEDITECH reporting consultant | Whatever you specify and pay to maintain | Consulting fees, quoted |
| Medici (Harris OnPoint) | Vendor implementation with your IT | Antibiogram reports alongside AUR; ask how | Not published |
| WHONET fed by a lab export | One person on a Windows PC | Yes, once configured | Free software, your hours |
| Antimicrobe fed by a lab export | The stewardship team, in a browser | Yes, applied automatically with counts shown | $249 a month (Lab) or $749 (Stewardship) |
Where Medici fits for a MEDITECH hospital
Medici deserves a closer look if NHSN reporting is also on your list. Harris OnPoint describes it as an antimicrobial stewardship solution validated by CDC for antimicrobial use and resistance reporting, ONC certified, able to integrate with any EHR, with implementation in weeks, and it lists sharing antibiogram reports and producing antibiograms for empiric therapy guidance among its functions. It is a platform purchase with an implementation project and an unpublished price, so it answers a bigger question than the antibiogram alone.
Is a MEDITECH antibiogram report good enough for CLSI M39?
It can be, if the query was written to M39. A MEDITECH antibiogram meets CLSI M39 when it keeps the first isolate per patient per organism in the period, suppresses cells under 30 isolates, states how intermediate results count, and prints the breakpoint version. Ask the person who owns the report to show you the de-duplication logic in the SQL, not a finished PDF.
A ten-minute test works on any system: take the report's E. coli urine row, then count unique patients with an E. coli urine isolate in the same year from a line list. If the report's isolate count is well above the patient count, it is counting repeat cultures, and the resistance figures are inflated by your sickest patients.
How much does it cost to build an antibiogram in MEDITECH?
The license cost is usually zero, because the hospital already owns its MEDITECH lab applications and, in many cases, the Data Repository. The real cost is analyst time: writing the query to M39, validating it against a manual count, and repeating that after upgrades and breakpoint revisions. Hospitals without a report writer pay a consultant instead, at quoted rates.
Compare that with a tool priced per month. Antimicrobe is $249 a month for one facility on the Lab plan, bought by card, or $749 for up to three facilities with unit cuts and quarterly trends. The input is a CSV line list, which a MEDITECH lab can produce once a quarter without a new report build: patient or MRN, collection date, specimen source, unit, organism, antibiotic and S, I or R.
The full cost comparison across enterprise platforms, free tools and our plans is in how much antibiogram software costs, and the export columns are explained on the LIS integration page.
Which route fits which MEDITECH hospital
A MEDITECH hospital with an in-house report writer who already maintains microbiology reports should keep the antibiogram in the Data Repository and invest a day in checking it against M39. That is the cheapest route when the person exists and stays.
A community or critical access hospital on Expanse whose IT team is two people and a vendor contract usually does not have that person. For that hospital a quarterly export into a $249 a month tool is cheaper than the analyst hours, and the method is identical every year. Hospitals that need NHSN AUR submission as well should evaluate a certified platform such as Medici, Sentri7 or VigiLanz, and can still keep the antibiogram separate.
Critical access hospitals should also read the critical access hospital antibiogram page, because small isolate counts change how the report has to be built. Community hospitals building a wider shortlist can start with the best antimicrobial stewardship software for community hospitals. Epic hospitals have their own version of this guide in antibiogram software for Epic hospitals, and Oracle Health hospitals in antibiogram software for Cerner hospitals.
Questions to ask your MEDITECH analyst before buying anything
- Where does our current antibiogram come from: a lab report, a Data Repository query or a spreadsheet?
- Does it keep the first isolate per patient per organism, and in what period?
- Does it suppress cells under 30 isolates, or print every percentage?
- Which CLSI breakpoint version does it apply, and who updates it after a revision?
- Who wrote it, are they still here, and when was it last validated against a manual count?
- Can the lab export a susceptibility line list as CSV each quarter if we move the report elsewhere?
Related on this site: antibiogram software for Sunrise Clinical Manager hospitals, LIS susceptibility export, critical access hospital antibiogram, hospital antibiogram software, CLSI and EUCAST breakpoints.