It takes a village: decreasing inappropriate antibiotic prescribing for upper respiratory tract infections.

Objective: Prescribing of antibiotics for viral upper respiratory infections (URIs) remains a pressing public health problem. We sought to reduce inappropriate prescribing of antibiotics for URIs in Mayo Clinic Arizona.

Design: Single-center, quasi-experimental, and retrospective cohort study.

Setting: Emergency medicine and all primary care departments.

Methods: The interventions included sharing baseline prescribing data, education, resources, and quarterly peer comparison reports. Encounters with diagnostic codes for respiratory infections commonly caused by viruses were categorized as Tier 3 (ie, never appropriate to prescribe antibiotics). Our goal was to reduce inappropriate prescribing for Tier 3 encounters by 22% in 2022.

Results: Department education was completed by June 2022. The annual antibiotic prescribing rate for Tier 3 encounters was reduced by 29%, from a baseline rate of 23.6% in 2021 to 16.4% in 2022 (P < .001). The posteducation prescribing rate was 13.1%. Repeat respiratory-related healthcare contact within 14 days of Tier 3 encounters did not differ between patients prescribed and not prescribed an antibiotic in all of 2022 (4.7% antibiotic vs 4.2% no antibiotic, P = .595) or during the posteducation period (3.7% vs 4.6%, P = .604).

Conclusion: A multi-faceted intervention, which included baseline education, syndrome-specific order panels, resources for symptomatic management, and peer comparison reports, resulted in significant reduction of inappropriate antibiotic prescribing for URIs.