The Data Are in: Focusing on Antibiotic Stewardship Curbs Bad Prescribing Habits in Urgent Care

At the outset of a quality-improvement project at Intermountain Health’s urgent care network,  48% of patients received a prescription for antibiotics; by the end of the project, that figure was down to 33%. As reported in a paper published by JAMA Network Open, the interventions credited with that reduction included educating providers and patients; employing various EMR tools; a benchmarking dashboard that was accessible to all providers; and a media campaign. The data reflected 493,724 encounters at 38 urgent care centers and one telemedicine clinic. The authors suggest that “this study provides a model for UC antibiotic stewardship.”