Researchers studied the effect of antimicrobial stewardship programs on 18 community-based pediatric primary care practices. In the first 12 months of implementing the antimicrobial stewardship programs that included the audit and feedback, prescribing rates of broad-spectrum antibiotics fell from 26.8 percent to 14.3 percent.
However, once the audit and feedback was discontinued, the prescription rates increased over time, growing higher than the baseline level, rising from 16.7 percent at the end of the intervention to 27.9 percent in 18 months (data sets were restandardized to include the additional data collection time following the intervention).
“These data suggest that audit and feedback was a vital element of this intervention and that antimicrobial stewardship requires continued, active efforts to sustain initial improvements in prescribing,” the authors concluded.
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