Improving antibiotic prescribing for community-acquired pneumonia in a provincial hospital in Northern Vietnam.

Objectives: To test the effectiveness of a quality improvement programme to promote adherence to national quality standards (QS) for patients hospitalized with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP), exploring the factors that hindered improvements in clinical practice.

Methods: An improvement bundle aligned to the QS was deployed using plan-do-study-act methodology in a 600 bed hospital in northern Vietnam from July 2018 to April 2019. Proposed care improvements included CURB65 score guided hospitalization, timely diagnosis and inpatient antibiotic treatment review to limit the spectrum and duration of IV antibiotic use.