Inappropriate Diagnosis of Community-Acquired Pneumonia (CAP)
Pneumonia is the leading infectious cause of hospitalization in the United States. Yet up to 1 in 8 patients diagnosed with pneumonia do not have pneumonia. Unnecessary antibiotic treatment in patients without pneumonia can lead to adverse events, antibiotic resistance, and delays in finding true underlying conditions such as lung cancer, heart failure, and myocardial diseases. The resulting diagnostic and treatment delays can have severe consequences for patients.
In collaboration with the Michigan Hospital Medicine Safety Consortium and with generous support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the measure “Inappropriate Diagnosis of Community-Acquired Pneumonia (CAP) in Hospitalized Medical Patients” was submitted to the National Quality Forum in April 2022 for consideration of adoption as a national quality measure. This measure received formal endorsement from NQF in December 2022.
The Inappropriate Diagnosis of CAP measure reflects the percentage of hospitalized medical patients treated for CAP that don’t actually have CAP. Currently, the measure requires manual chart abstraction. Additional detail on measure specifications, measure development, and the REDCap data collection form can be found below. If you are interested in collecting data on this measure at your hospital, please email us for additional information.
- CAP Measure Specifications
- Data Collection Form
- CAP Data Definitions
- Guideline for using the Community-Acquired Pneumonia (CAP) Data Dictionary
- Patient Engagement Panel Summary
- Technical Expert Panel Summary
- CAP Validity
- CAP Reliability
- Literature
- Gupta A, Petty L, Gandhi T, Flanders S, Hsaiky L, Basu T, Zhang Q, Horowitz J, Masood Z, Chopra V, Vaughn VM. (2022). Overdiagnosis of urinary tract infection linked to overdiagnosis of pneumonia: a multihospital cohort study. BMJ Qual Saf. bmjqs-2021-013565. doi: 10.1136/bmjqs-2021-013565. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 34987084. Abstract
- Vaughn VM, Gandhi TN, Petty LA, Patel PK, Prescott HC, Malani AN, Ratz D, McLaughlin E, Chopra V, Flanders SA. (2021). Empiric Antibacterial Therapy and Community-onset Bacterial Coinfection in Patients Hospitalized With Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19): A Multi-hospital Cohort Study. Clinical Infectious Diseases. 72(5), e533–e541. doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciaa1239. Abstract
For questions, please contact the measure steward at NQF-HMS-CAP@umich.edu.