A new research study authored by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) shows that hospitals in the United States are wasting money on unnecessary antibiotics. The excess antibiotics use led to about $163 million in extra spending by hospitals.
This information is troubling, because overuse of antibiotics can lead to an increase in the number of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria. The improper use of antibiotics can be damaging to patient health as well -- antibiotics come with side effects. More than that, using antibiotics even when they are not needed adds to the overall cost of healthcare.
The new study is published in the October issue of the journal Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, which is published by the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA).
Leslie Schultz, who led the study, said that this improper use of antibiotics is a problem across the board in healthcare facilities. "Sometimes in an effort to 'do whatever it takes' to fight a serious infection, clinicians use multiple antibiotics to treat the same infection. This practice can contribute to antimicrobial resistance, put patient safety at risk and increase costs. We hope these findings help to enhance the antimicrobial stewardship initiatives that the majority of U.S. hospitals already have in place today," Schultz said.
The study revealed that almost 70 percent of the unnecessary treatments involved the same three drug combinations. The use of metronidazole and piperacillin-tazobactam in concert was very prevalent, used in over 50 percent of all of the treatments. This suggests that doctors should watch out for these specific treatments, and that hospitals should help doctors to determine whether the specific antibiotics chosen are really necessary.
The CDC researchers looked at data from over 500 hospitals in the United States over a three year period from 2008 to 2011. They found that about 78 percent of hospitals had recurring misuse of antibiotics. The cases from just those 500 hospitals represented about $13 million spend on unnecessary antibiotics. If the data was extrapolated to all hospitals in the United States, the team estimated that there could be as much as $163 million of unnecessary spending from antibiotic drugs alone.
"Improving the way antibiotics are prescribed not only helps reduce rates of Clostridium difficile infection and antibiotic resistance, but can also improve individual patient outcomes, all while reducing healthcare costs," said Arjun Srinivasan, a CDC official. "Eliminating these unnecessarily duplicative antibiotic therapies is a simple way that all facilities can both protect their patients and save healthcare dollars."
