Jeremiah D. Schuur, MD, MHS, is vice chair of quality and safety and chief of the Division of Health Policy Research and Translation in the Department of Emergency Medicine, Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston. He also serves as assistant professor at Harvard Medical School.
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Michelle Lin, MD, MPH, is an attending emergency physician and a fellow in the Division of Health Policy Research and Translation in the Department of Emergency Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. She also serves as an instructor at Harvard Medical School.
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2 Responses to “Blood Culture Testing: Send Samples Selectively to Lower Costs, Medico-Legal Risk”
October 4, 2014
CuloochGreat article!
In future versions would be useful to discuss the cost of false positive cultures (usually $4000-7000 per false positive in a hospitalized patient)
Also it is not so important whether or not a culture is positive but rather how often does it change management. While 4% of ED drawn blood cultures may be positive (and half of those being false positives) a positive culture almost never prompts a change in abx. When it does, it is almost always in a immunosuppressed patient orthose with severe sepsis/septic shock
June 10, 2015
Delores LyonWow, I had no idea that blood cultures could be so inaccurate. With a false positive testing rate of 40%, that is a lot of unnecessary follow up. In my opinion, if I was sick for some reason, I would probably want my doctor to forego something like this. The last thing I want is unnecessary medical bills.