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TUESDAY, Feb. 4, 2020 (HealthDay News) — Large proportions of antibiotic prescriptions for Medicaid patients are filled without evidence of infection-related diagnoses or clinician visits, according to a report published in the February issue of Health Affairs<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Michael A. Fischer, M.D., from Harvard Medical School in Boston, and colleagues examined the frequency with which all filled antibiotic prescriptions for Medicaid patients were associated with infections and in-person visits in the period from 2004 to 2013.<\/p>\n
The researchers found that 55, 17, and 28 percent of the 298 million antibiotic fills (62 percent for children) for 53 million patients were for clinician visits with an infection-related diagnosis, were for clinician visits without an infection-related diagnosis, and were not associated with a visit, respectively. Compared with adults, children less commonly had non-visit-based antibiotic prescriptions, which were more common in the West than in other U.S. regions.<\/p>\n
“By failing to measure appropriate antibiotic prescribing, not including non-infection-related and non-visit-based prescribing, or focusing on narrow clinical scenarios, existing general and specific policies seem unlikely to improve antibiotic use on a large scale,” the authors write. “To improve public health, ambulatory antibiotic stewardship policies should include comprehensive measurement of antibiotic use and comprehensive measures of appropriateness.”<\/p>\n
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