Impact of Rejection of Low-Quality Wound Swabs on Antimicrobial Prescribing: A Controlled Before-After Study.

In this controlled before-after study, wound swabs were only processed for culture, identification, and susceptibility testing if a quality metric, determined by the Q score, was met. Rejection of low-quality wound swabs resulted in a modest decrease in reflexive antibiotic initiation while reducing laboratory workload and generating few clinician requests.