Yearning to Satisfy Urgent Care Patients Could Encourage Antibiotic Overprescribing

Want to make patients happy? Prescribe an antibiotic and send them on their way. If you actually want to practice good antibiotic stewardship and help protect them against future resistance problems by prescribing an antibiotic only when it’s truly warranted, however…well, that’s another story. A study just published in JAMA Internal Medicine reveals that patients rate themselves happiest with a physician visit when they receive an antibiotic prescription they asked for to treat a respiratory tract infection—whether they needed it or not. Sixty-six percent of them got what they asked for—the antibiotic, which the authors said is too high a number, given typical rates for bacterial vs viral infections. The authors’ stated concern is that prescribers may be unwittingly incentivized to prescribe more antibiotics than they should in order to curry higher patient satisfaction scores. Patients were likelier to grant a five-star rating (on a scale of 0 to 5) when they asked for and received a prescription than if they didn’t, with 87% giving a perfect score, but that figure went up to 90% if that prescription was for an antibiotic.