The Added Cost of Rapid Diagnostic Testing and Active Antimicrobial Stewardship: Is It Worth It?

ABSTRACT Rapid diagnostic testing reduces the turnaround time for pathogen identification in the clinical microbiology laboratory, but the impact on patient care and hospital costs is a matter of speculation. Patel et al. (J. Clin. Microbiol. 55:60–67, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1128/JCM.01452-16) investigate the impact of matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization–time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) in conjunction with active antimicrobial stewardship to determine if implementation is indeed worth the added costs.