Appropriateness of Antibiotic Prescribing in US Emergency Department Visits, 2016-2021

Joseph Benigno Ladines-Lim; Michael A Fischer; Jeffrey A Linder; Kao-Ping Chua

doi:10.1017/ash.2024.79

Appropriateness of Antibiotic Prescribing in US Emergency Department Visits, 2016-2021

Antimicrob Steward Healthc Epidemiol. 2024 May 14;4(1):e79. doi: 10.1017/ash.2024.79. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Joseph Benigno Ladines-Lim¹, Michael A Fischer², Jeffrey A Linder³, Kao-Ping Chua⁴

Affiliations

¹ Departments of Internal Medicine and Pediatrics, University of Michigan, Michigan Medicine, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
² Section of General Internal Medicine, Boston Medical Center, Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA.
³ Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Medicine, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL, USA.
⁴ Susan B. Meister Child Health and Evaluation Research Center, Department of Pediatrics, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.

Abstract

In this national analysis of US emergency department visits with antibiotic prescribing during 2016-2021, 27.6% of visits resulted in inappropriate antibiotic prescribing: 14.9% had diagnosis codes plausibly antibiotic-related (eg, acute bronchitis), suggesting actual inappropriate prescribing, and 12.6% had diagnosis codes not plausibly antibiotic-related (eg, hypertension), suggesting poor coding quality.