Antibiotic Prescribing Quality in Out-of-Hours Primary Care and Critical Appraisal of Disease-Specific Quality Indicators

Antibiotic Prescribing Quality in Out-of-Hours Primary Care and Critical Appraisal of Disease-Specific Quality Indicators

Blog Article

Outpatient antibiotic use in Belgium is among the highest in Europe.The most common reason for an encounter in out-of-hours (OOH) primary care is an infection.In this study, we assessed all consultations from July 2016 to June 2018 at five OOH services.We described antibiotic prescribing by diagnosis, calculated disease-specific antibiotic prescribing quality indicators’ (APQI) values and critically appraised these APQI.

We determined that Christmas Village 111,600 encounters resulted in 26,436 (23.7%) antibiotic prescriptions.The APQI diagnoses (i.e.

, bronchitis, upper respiratory infection, cystitis, tonsillitis, sinusitis, otitis media, and pneumonia) covered 14,927 (56.7%) antibiotic prescriptions.Erysipelas (1344 (5.1%)) and teeth/gum disease (982 (3.

7%)) covered more prescriptions than sinusitis or pneumonia.Over 75% of patients with tonsillitis and over 50% Shorts with bronchitis, sinusitis, and otitis media were prescribed an antibiotic.Only for otitis media the choice of antibiotic was near the acceptable range.Over 10% of patients with bronchitis or pneumonia and over 25% of female patients with an acute cystitis received quinolones.

The APQI cover the diagnoses for only 57% of all antibiotic prescriptions.As 5.1% and 3.7% of antibiotic prescriptions are made for erysipelas and teeth/gum disease, respectively, we propose to add these indications when assessing antibiotic prescribing quality in OOH primary care.