In small, community hospitals that don’t have resources for a dedicated staff to oversee the proper use of antibiotics, turning to staff pharmacists showed promise in a model study conducted by Duke Health.

The study, which included four community hospitals in North Carolina, demonstrated an approach that could be expanded to the nation’s wider network of small hospitals, where more than half of the U.S. population accesses care.

“This is a matter of major consequence, because up to 50 percent of antibiotic use in our study was inappropriate, meaning there was a better choice or the prescription was simply unnecessary,” said Deverick Anderson, MD, director of the Duke Center for Antimicrobial Stewardship and Infection Prevention and lead author of the study publishing Friday in JAMA Network Open.

“We have to develop systems that are scalable and effective in helping reduce the improper or needless use of antibiotics at every level,” Anderson said, noting that overuse of these critical drugs has led to the spread of deadly superbugs that are resistant to previously effective treatments.