Reducing blood culture contamination in the emergency department: an interrupted time series quality improvement study.

Objectives: Blood culture contamination is a common problem in the emergency department (ED) that leads to unnecessary patient morbidity and health care costs. The study objective was to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of a quality improvement (QI) intervention for reducing blood culture contamination in an ED.

Methods: The authors developed a QI intervention to reduce blood culture contamination in the ED and then evaluated its effectiveness in a prospective interrupted times series study.