Antimicrobial Stewardship Program

The Houston Methodist Antimicrobial Stewardship Program (HM ASP) develops, implements and evaluates effective and sustainable patient care interventions that optimize clinical outcomes of antimicrobial use across Houston Methodist. The HM ASP benchmarks antimicrobial use and interventions from each entity internally and nationally to provide individualized feedback at the entity level for targeted interventions and outcomes assessments. The HM ASP committee seeks to align efforts of each Houston Methodist entity that conform to their respective size, staffing, and infrastructure to enhance antibiotic use, interventions and surveillance.

• Multidisciplinary committee consisting of medical staff, clinical pharmacists, microbiologists, information system specialists, infection control and epidemiology specialists, nursing, quality and patient safety, and hospital leadership 
• Policy and decision support from the Houston Methodist Pharmacy & Therapeutics Committee and Quality and Patient Safety Department 
• Centralized clinical microbiology laboratory services
• Support and collaboration of hospital administrators, medical staff leadership, and local providers
• Hospital administrative support for informatics resources to improve decision making, to measure and track antimicrobial use and resistance patterns, to identify opportunities for interventions, and to detect adverse drug events