Antibiotic stewardship is of national importance in all medical settings but especially important in the on-demand market (emergency rooms, urgent care and retail medical clinics). Many studies have documented that antibiotics in these medical settings have been and are continuously over-utilized. In an effort to understand and correct this in our organization, we reviewed the prescribing patterns for all of our medical providers, in over 320,000 patient visits, over a variety of seasons and implemented measures to reduce inappropriate prescribing. This report describes interventions of our “Smarter Use of Antibiotics” campaign for non-strep pharyngeal infections, “bronchitis” and upper respiratory infections including suspected sinusitis. We will also describe our results, including a reduction in antibiotic prescribing among all providers and a 60% drop in prescribing among those who prescribed most often.
Learning Objectives:
Develop an educational program to emphasize antibiotic stewardship
Implement a program to effectiively monitor antibiotic prescribing
Institute measures to reduce inappropriate prescribing
Provide feedback to Clinicians regarding antibiotic stewardship performance
Monitor "antibiotic stewardship" on an ongoing basis in each Urgent Care System relative to nationally established norms