Antibiotic Education and Feedback improving Care

Prescribing antibiotics for children is very common. About 75% of these medications are given to treat acute respiratory tract infections. A new study evaluated whether pediatricians who received education about current prescribing guidelines and feedback about the prescriptions they wrote would prescribe these drugs more effectively.  “The infections we targeted were things like sinus infections, strep throat and pneumonia.” Dr. Jeffrey Gerber and co-authors studied pediatric primary care practices sharing a common electronic health record.  Some physicians were provided a one-hour refresher about current antibiotic prescribing guidelines and a year of personalized feedback about how they used those guidelines when prescribing medications for acute respiratory tract infections. “Off guideline prescribing decreased by nearly 50% for pediatricians who received education and feedback and specifically for patients with pneumonia the intervention reduced off guideline prescribing by 75%.”  The study appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association.