Antibiotic Awareness Week begins November 18. The Urgent Care Association, the College of Urgent Care Medicine (CUCM), and the Urgent Care Foundation (UCF) are promoting antibiotic stewardship in urgent care medicine by reinforcing best-practice objectives and action points. In May 2022, UCF was awarded a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to further antibiotic stewardship. This inaugural federal award for UCF is now funding UCA and CUCM activities as part of a five-year cooperative agreement that continues through 2025. Key aspects include tactics to maintain patient satisfaction, processes for data benchmarking, educational strategies, and support through clinical leadership. You can watch a series of member videos about antibiotic stewardship in urgent care on the UCA website.
In case you forgot: According to the CDC, some 30% of antibiotics prescribed in outpatient settings are unnecessary. The urgent care community can reduce unnecessary prescribing, based on the fact that urgent care providers make clinical prescribing decisions for more than 210 million patients a year, according to UCA.