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. 2024 Jun;45(6):777-780.
doi: 10.1017/ice.2023.292. Epub 2024 Feb 8.

Antibiotic prescribing for acute respiratory infections during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic: Patterns in a nationwide telehealth service provider

Jeffrey A Linder  1   2 , Stephen D Persell  1   2 , Marcella A Kelley  3   4 , Mark Friedberg  5 , Noah J Goldstein  6 , Tara K Knight  3 , Katrina M Kaiser  3 , Jason N Doctor  3 , Wendy J Mack  7 , Jason Tibbels  8 , Bridget McCabe  8 , Steve Haenchen  8 , Daniella Meeker  9
Affiliations

Antibiotic prescribing for acute respiratory infections during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic: Patterns in a nationwide telehealth service provider

Jeffrey A Linder et al. Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol. 2024 Jun.

Abstract

We examined 3,046,538 acute respiratory infection (ARI) encounters with 6,103 national telehealth physicians from January 2019 to October 2021. The antibiotic prescribing rates were 44% for all ARIs; 46% were antibiotic appropriate; 65% were potentially appropriate; 19% resulted from inappropriate diagnoses; and 10% were related to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) diagnosis.

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Conflict of interest statement

J.T., B.M., and S.H. are shareholders in Teladoc Health, Inc (Purchase, NY). All other authors report no conflicts of interest relevant to this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Antibiotic prescribing over time for acute respiratory infection (ARI) encounters, January 2019–October 2021. Weekly antibiotic prescribing rates for encounters with any ARI or COVID-19 diagnosis (first row), ARIs that do not include COVID-19 (second row), and COVID-19 encounters where COVID-19 diagnosis was present (third row). Antibiotics are considered appropriate or potentially appropriate in COVID-19 encounters where an appropriate or potentially appropriate diagnosis was present in the same encounter.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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