Abstract
Ambulatory antibiotic stewards, researchers, and performance measurement programs choose different durations to associate diagnoses with antibiotic prescriptions. We assessed how the apparent appropriateness of antibiotic prescribing changes when using different look-back and look-forward periods. Examining durations of 0 days (same-day), −3 days, −7 days, −30 days, ±3 days, ±7 days, and ±30 days, we classified all ambulatory antibiotic prescriptions in the electronic health record of an integrated health care system from 2016 to 2019 (714,057 prescriptions to 348,739 patients by 2391 clinicians) as chronic, appropriate, potentially appropriate, inappropriate, or not associated with any diagnosis. Overall, 16% percent of all prescriptions were classified as chronic infection related. Using only same-day diagnoses, appropriate, potentially appropriate, inappropriate, and not-associated antibiotics, accounted for 14%, 36%, 22%, and 11% of prescriptions, respectively. As the duration of association increased, the proportion of appropriate antibiotics stayed the same (range, 14% to 18%), potentially appropriate antibiotics increased (e.g., 43% for −30 days), inappropriate stayed the same (range, 22% to 24%), and not-associated antibiotics decreased (e.g., 2% for −30 days). Using the longest look-back-and-forward duration (±30 days), appropriate, potentially appropriate, inappropriate, and not-associated antibiotics, accounted for 18%, 44%, 20%, and 2% of prescriptions, respectively. Ambulatory programs and studies focused on appropriate or inappropriate antibiotic prescribing can reasonably use a short duration of association between an antibiotic prescription and diagnosis codes. Programs and studies focused on potentially appropriate antibiotic prescribing might consider examining longer durations.
Original language | English (US) |
---|---|
Article number | 1554 |
Journal | Antibiotics |
Volume | 11 |
Issue number | 11 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Nov 2022 |
Funding
Linder is supported by a contract from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (HHSP233201500020I) and grants from the National Institute on Aging (R33AG057383, R33AG057395, P30AG059988, R01AG069762), the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (R01HS026506, R01HS028127), and the Peterson Center on Healthcare.
Keywords
- anti-bacterial agents
- antimicrobial stewardship
- cohort studies
- drug utilization
- quality of healthcare
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics
- Microbiology (medical)
- Infectious Diseases
- Pharmacology (medical)
- Biochemistry
- Microbiology