Magnolia Medical Technologies Inc, Seattle, recently launched a new Best Practice Blood Culture kit. Developed in partnership with Aero-Med, a division of Cardinal Health, the kit combines the Steripath Gen2 initial specimen diversion device with additional supplies required for the collection of blood culture samples that are virtually free of contamination.
The custom-designed kits are backed by an enhanced clinical performance guarantee. Magnolia Medical guarantees a sustained reduction in blood culture contamination of 50% or greater for all Steripath Gen2 products. When used with the Best Practice Blood Culture kit, and the 50% reduction has been surpassed, Magnolia Medical guarantees a 0.5% contamination rate backed by a $1,000 credit for any contamination event within the guarantee thresholds.
Bob Gerberich, Magnolia Medical Technologies.
“We are pleased to be partnering with Aero-Med in providing the Best Practice Blood Culture kit,” says Bob Gerberich, CCO at Magnolia Medical. “Steripath Gen2 is enabling a new standard for blood culture contamination prevention. The convenience of having all of the critical components easily available to clinicians in a single kit means that more patients will benefit from vastly improved sepsis testing accuracy, which directly drives antibiotic stewardship.”
Blood culture is a critically important clinical test that helps physicians determine whether a patient has a serious and potentially life-threatening blood infection such as sepsis. However, blood draws performed for culture can become contaminated with bacteria during the blood collection process. Steripath Gen2 uses a patented technology to mechanically divert and isolate the initial 1.5–2.0 mL of blood, the portion known to contain contaminants. The device then opens an independent sterile blood flow path for specimen collection.
Steripath has demonstrated sustained blood culture contamination rates as low as 0.2% in the emergency department, positive predictive value for sepsis as high as 97%, and as much as a 37% reduction in vancomycin days of therapy.1,2
Greg Bullington, Magnolia Medical Technologies.
“Our goal as a company is to change national blood culture guidelines and reduce the contamination rate benchmark from 3% to below 1%. At the current benchmark rate, there are still over 1.2 million patients put at risk with false-positive results annually,” says Greg Bullington, CEO of Magnolia Medical. “At Magnolia Medical, we see blood culture contamination as a preventable error. By providing a two-tier clinical performance guarantee, we are eliminating barriers to the adoption of Steripath Gen2 by hospitals throughout the country and demonstrating our commitment to empowering healthcare providers to improve sepsis testing accuracy.
“Our customers have achieved and reported on improved patient safety, enhanced antibiotic stewardship, and significantly reduced costs using Steripath Gen2,” says Bullington. “Our mission is to ensure our technology is made available to all patients nationwide. We believe offering our clinical performance guarantee is an important step in advancing a new standard of care for sepsis testing accuracy.”
For more information, visit Magnolia Medical Technologies.
References
- M. Rupp, Cavalieri RJ, Marolf C, Lyden E. Reduction in blood culture contamination through use of initial specimen diversion device. Clin Infect Dis. 2017;65(2):201–205; doi: 10.1093/cid/cix304.
- Chang D, et al. Impact of blood culture diversion device and molecular pathogen identification on vancomycin use [abstract]. Society of Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) Spring 2017 Conference, St Louis, March 29–30, 2017. Schedule available by subscription.
