Utah's Intermountain Health Gets Grant To Combat Antibiotic Abuse

When you think of drug abuse, understandably medicine like oxycodone or fentanyl come to mind.

Another abuse has been occurring lately, and the fault often lies with the prescribing doctor.

Intermountain Health researchers have received a major grant to tackle the problem of antibiotic resistance and antibiotic overuse in urgent care and outpatient clinics to ensure patients are getting the best and most effective care for their illnesses.

The new $356,000 grant will be used to launch the Intermountain ReSCORE-UC project, a two-year study of behavioral and organizational methods to enhance antibiotic use in Intermountain urgent care centers and outpatient clinics.

The grant is from Merck, a global science and technology company that develops medicines, vaccines, and other health solution. It will allow Intermountain researchers to better understand how to maintain consistent improvements in antibiotic prescribing in these outpatient community settings.

“In the field of antibiotic stewardship, Intermountain Health has been a national leader,” said Payal Patel, MD, enterprise medical director for antimicrobial stewardship at Intermountain Health and co-investigator on the study. “This grant will continue to put us at the forefront of understanding how we can make sure that we optimize antibiotic use in the urgent care setting to improve our prescribing rates, and also demonstrate to other health systems how they can do the same.”

“We really want to know what leads to behavior change to enhance antibiotic usage,” said Park Willis, MD, a family medicine physician at Intermountain Health who is also a co-investigator and medical director for regional urgent care for Intermountain.

Overuse of antibiotic prescriptions for patients with upper respiratory illnesses at urgent care clinics in the United States has been an ongoing challenge, but a new study led by researchers at two Utah health systems – Intermountain Health and University of Utah Health – finds that a targeted approach utilizing antibiotic stewardship practices significantly reduces overuse of these medications.

Researchers say that when healthcare systems create and implement a tailored and targeted intervention designed specifically for urgent care facilities, they can be successful in ensuring patients are receiving more appropriate care for their illnesses.

Urgent care facilities play a critical role in American healthcare. They’re one of the fastest growing sites of outpatient delivery care in the U.S., with patient visits increasing by 50% or more in recent years.

As beneficial as they are in meeting important, but not emergency medical situations, urgent care centers have also lagged in terms of antibiotic stewardship. Clinicians in these settings are more likely to prescribe antibiotics even when they are not likely to help a patient, which can lead to dangerous side effects and contribute to antibiotic resistance.