I was unable to find the answer to my question about a pediatric patient on IDMP. Whom should I contact for questions about UCSF West Bay pediatric patients? 

For pediatric patients with active ID consults, please contact the pediatric ID team if you have any questions about susceptibility to antibiotics not listed. For patients without ID consults please contact pediatric ASP personnel.  

Which UCSF resource is recommended to answer questions about empiric antibiotic therapy for common infections?   

IDMP Empiric Therapy Guidelines include recommendations on skin/soft tissue infection, urinary tract infection, and many other common syndromes.

What resource should I use to provide guidance about the management of patients with antibiotic allergies? 

Most syndrome specific guidance contain alternative options for allergic patients. For additional guidance, including assessing whether a reaction represents a true allergy, refer to beta-lactam allergy guideline. 

I was unable to find the answer to my question on IDMP, who should I contact for adult patients at UCSF West Bay sites? 

The below tables are meant to provide guidance on the best contact point in certain situations, but cannot account for all situations and clinical judgement should be used.

Table 1: Adult Inpatients without an active ID consult (If ID is consulting, direct all questions to that team) 

*Team-based pharmacist to escalate questions to ID/ASP pharmacist as appropriate.

Table 2: Adult Outpatients who are not followed by ID clinic or UCSF OPAT (For patients who are followed by ID Clinic or UCSF OPAT, please direct all questions to them)

To place an ID E-Consult for adult outpatients, order “eConsult to General Infectious Disease” or “eConsult ID for Transplant/Heme Malignancy.”

How are decisions made about antibiotic susceptibility testing and first-line antibiotics recommended? 

• The UCSF Clinical Microbiology Laboratory in consultation with antimicrobial stewardship (ASP) and other relevant stakeholders selectively reports susceptibility results, favoring agents that are considered more likely to be appropriate for a particular pathogen or site of infection, and suppressing or hiding agents that are second-line or not usually considered “optimal” therapy for a pathogen. 
• If first-line agents are not active, further testing is automatically released (called cascade reporting).  
• The microbiology lab may be able to test additional agents or release suppressed results by request, but those agents may not necessarily be appropriate for the pathogen, and testing may not be available for agents that are always or generally inappropriate for a particular pathogen. Interpretation of add-on or suppressed results may be challenging or subject to caveats (i.e. not appropriate or ineffective for an isolate cultured from that space, such as using daptomycin for pneumonia). Consider expert consultation in these situations.

Updated 6/2024