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The report

Hospital antibiogram software, a cumulative antibiogram report, from twelve months of isolates to a signed-off report

The annual antibiogram is the most reused document a microbiology laboratory produces, and usually the most expensive one to make.

Read the short answer

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Antibiogram Builder
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under 40 40 to 59 60 to 74 75 to 89 90 and over n<30, below the reporting threshold n/t, not tested on this panel

Short answer

A hospital antibiogram is a periodic summary of susceptibility across all isolates in a period, organism by antibiotic, used to guide empiric therapy. CLSI document M39 describes how to build one: analyse at least a year, include only the first isolate per patient per organism, and do not report an organism and drug combination with fewer than 30 isolates.

Computed from your own isolates, never from a national average.

The three rules that decide every number on the page

Almost every disagreement about an antibiogram comes down to one of these, and each is a visible setting in the builder rather than something buried in a method note.

A rule-by-rule check of your current report against the guideline, including the CAP MIC.12040 annual requirement, is on CLSI M39 antibiogram software.

  • First isolate per patient per organism, so repeat cultures cannot skew the report toward the sickest patients
  • A minimum of 30 isolates before a cell is reported, because a percentage on a handful of isolates reads like a fact and is not
  • A stated treatment of intermediate results, either excluded from the denominator or counted as resistant

Where the weeks go, and what removes them

The analysis is not the slow part. The slow part is pulling the export, de-duplicating by hand in a spreadsheet, pivoting, checking the suppressed cells, formatting, circulating a draft, and doing it again when someone asks for the intensive care version.

When those steps are one filter combination, the annual report stops being a project and the follow-up questions stop being a negotiation.

Sub-reports worth publishing alongside it

Hospitals that admit children should publish the pediatric cut as soon as the counts allow, because pediatric MRSA and clindamycin rates rarely match the adult report. How to build it in a mixed hospital, including the NICU, is on the pediatric antibiogram software page.

The outpatient cut matters most to clinics that prescribe for cystitis without culture results in hand. If your system runs urgent care sites or an outreach lab, the outpatient antibiogram software page covers building that report on its own. The intensive care cut, and the order of operations that keeps it honest, is on ICU antibiogram software.

  • Intensive care versus non-intensive care, the most requested cut in most hospitals
  • Urine only, which usually carries enough isolates to stand alone
  • Blood only, for the sepsis guideline, accepting that more cells will suppress
  • Pediatric isolates, where they exist in sufficient number
  • Outpatient and emergency department isolates, for the clinics and urgent care sites that share your lab

What hospital antibiogram software costs

Antimicrobe is $249 a month for one facility on the Lab plan, bought by card, with cuts by source and period, 25,000 isolates a year and 2 seats. The Stewardship plan is $749 a month for up to three facilities, with unit and syndrome cuts, quarterly trends and MDRO counts. There is no implementation fee and no interface to build: the input is the susceptibility CSV your lab already exports for the annual report.

The alternatives cost time rather than license fees. An Excel antibiogram usually takes a pharmacist or microbiologist several days a year, and an EHR-built report takes analyst hours to validate after every upgrade and breakpoint revision.

The full comparison is in how much antibiogram software costs. Hospitals on MEDITECH or Epic can read how the build works on their system in antibiogram software for MEDITECH hospitals and antibiogram software for Epic hospitals.

Related reading: the breakpoint set behind the numbers, the program that consumes the report, the same report for a nursing home, stewardship software for critical access hospitals. The four steps from susceptibility testing data to an antibiogram cover the method end to end.

Questions

On this page's topic

How long should the reporting period be?

A year is the convention and the safest default for cell counts. Shorter periods are useful for watching movement, and they will suppress more cells, which is the honest trade.

Should the antibiogram include all isolates or only significant ones?

That is a laboratory decision about what enters the export. The rules here apply to whatever you send, and the receipt states what was applied.

Can I reproduce last year exactly?

Yes, if you keep the export. The same file plus the same settings gives the same matrix, which is what makes a year-over-year comparison meaningful.

More on antimicrobial resistance reporting

Start with your own export

See your own resistance picture, cut the way you actually work

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