Abstract
Background
Retail health is a growing outpatient setting. Research using claims data found that antibiotics were linked with 46% of urgent care, 17% of medical office, and 14% of retail health visits for acute respiratory infections (ARIs) for which antibiotics are not needed. We aimed to quantify antibiotic prescribing rates to adult patients in a large retail health clinic chain using electronic health records and to identify future stewardship targets.
Methods
We included visits by adults ≥18 years to network retail health clinics from 2012 to 2016. We classified diagnoses by ICD codes. We calculated the percent of visits with systemic antibiotics prescribed among all visits, by individual diagnosis, and for ARIs as a group (e.g., pneumonia, sinusitis, pharyngitis, acute otitis media [AOM], bronchitis, and viral upper respiratory infections [URI]). We also assessed the percent of visits for sinusitis and pharyngitis with first-line antibiotics prescribed.
Results
Of 2,893,413 visits by adults during 2012–2016, 1,866,145 (66%) resulted in antibiotic prescriptions. ARIs accounted for 2,039,423 (72%) of visits and 1,475,069 (79%) of antibiotic prescriptions. The most common diagnoses regardless of antibiotic prescription were sinusitis (31% of visits), pharyngitis (15%, of which 81% were coded as streptococcal pharyngitis), urinary tract infection (9%), viral URI (8%), AOM (7%), and bronchitis (5%). Antibiotics were frequently prescribed for sinusitis, urinary tract infection, pharyngitis, and AOM but not for viral URI and bronchitis (Figure 1). First-line antibiotics were prescribed in the majority of sinusitis and pharyngitis visits (Figure 2).
Conclusion
ARIs are major drivers of visits by adult patients and of antibiotic prescribing to adults in this retail clinic network. Inappropriate antibiotic use was low in this setting for viral URI and bronchitis and first-line antibiotic selection was high for sinusitis and pharyngitis, although additional opportunities for improvement exist. Future antibiotic stewardship efforts may target examining adherence to guideline-recommended diagnostic criteria for sinusitis, AOM, and pharyngitis and increasing use of watchful waiting for sinusitis and AOM.
Disclosures
All Authors: No reported Disclosures.
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