Impact on blood cultures pre-analytical quality and positivity rate of a key performance indicators digital monitoring approach: a pre–post intervention study
Blood cultures (BCs) remain essential for diagnosing bloodstream infections, but their yield depends largely on pre-analytical phase quality. We evaluated the impact of an intervention guided by a digital platform for blood culture key performance indicators (KPIs) automated extraction in a single-center pre–post study. Following interventions, including feedback reports and staff education, solitary blood culture rate decreased by 71.7%, blood volume per episode increased by 7 mL per episode, and contamination rates improved. Contextually, the rate of true positive BCs relatively increased by ≅18%. Digital KPIs monitoring combined with targeted corrective interventions was associated with sustained improvements in BCs quality across hospital areas.
Authors
- Antonella Mencacci (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9221-6172)
- Claudio Palmieri
- Filippo Allegrucci
- Fabio Arena (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7265-3698)
- Arturo Pasqualucci
- Simona Carosati
Institutions
- Becton Dickinson (United States) (US)
- University of Perugia (IT)
- Ospedale Santa Maria (IT)
- Misericordia University (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- European Journal of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases
- Published
- 2026-09-22
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1007/s10096-026-05678-z
- Primary Topic
- Bacterial Identification and Susceptibility Testing
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00