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Identifying prescribers of antibiotics in a primary care spinal cord injury cohort

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Study Design — A retrospective cross-sectional study.

Objective — To identify who prescribes outpatient antibiotics among a primary care spinal cord injury (SCI) cohort.

Setting — ICES databases in Ontario, Canada.

Methods — A cohort of individuals with SCI were retrospectively identified using a tested-algorithm and chart reviews in a primary care electronic medical records database. The cohort was linked to a drug dispensing database to obtain outpatient antibiotic prescribing information, and prescriber details were obtained from a physician database.

Results — Final cohort included three hundred and twenty individuals with SCI. The average annual number of antibiotic courses dispensed for the SCI cohort was 2.0 ± 6.2. For dispensed antibiotics, 58.9% were prescribed by rostered-primary care practice physicians, compared to 17.9% by emergency and non-rostered primary care physicians, 17.4% by specialists and 6.1% by non-physician prescribers. Those who lived in urban areas and rural areas, compared to those who lived in suburban areas, were more likely to receive antibiotics from emergency and non-rostered primary care physicians than from rostered-primary care practice physicians.

Conclusion — Although individuals with SCI received outpatient antibiotic prescriptions from multiple sources, physicians from an individual’s rostered-primary care practice were the main antibiotic prescribers. As such, interventions to optimize antibiotics use in the SCI population should target the primary care practice.

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Citation

Senthinathan A, Penner M, Tu K, Morris AM, Craven BC, Jaglal SB. Spinal Cord Ser Cases. 2024; 10(1):3. Epub 2024 Feb 1.

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