Antibiotic prescribing and stewardship in outpatient telemedicine

A brand new report within the peer-reviewed journal Telemedicine and e-Health provides a review of the published literature on antibiotic prescribing and antibiotic stewardship in outpatient telemedicine. No less than 28% of antibiotic use in outpatient settings is unnecessary, contributing to excess costs, adversarial drug events, and antibiotic resistance.

Antibiotic stewardship, as provided for in a framework developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is the hassle to enhance antibiotic use in order that antibiotics are only prescribed once they provide a transparent profit.

Guillermo Sanchez, MSHS, PA-C, MPH, from the CDC, and coauthors, conducted a literature search to discover studies describing antibiotic use and antibiotic stewardship interventions in outpatient telemedicine.

“Our narrative review findings suggest that there may be growing evidence describing antibiotic use in outpatient telemedicine, including an expansion of implementation studies exploring application of antibiotic stewardship interventions to this setting, including those which have been used extensively in face-to-face outpatient care,” stated the investigators.

The investigators provide an in depth description of how telemedicine settings can initiate antibiotic stewardship.

“From the onset of incorporating telemedicine and telehealth into healthcare, we have now observed unique applications equivalent to antibiotic stewardship. These have grow to be commonplace in efficacy and utility in our quest for higher healthcare,” says Charles R. Doarn, MBA, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal and Research Professor within the Department of Environmental and Public Health Sciences, and Director of the Space Research Institute for Discovery and Exploration on the University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio.