Clinical StudiesVariations in Antimicrobial Use and Cost in More Than 2,000 Patients with Community-acquired Pneumonia fn1
Section snippets
Methods
This study was conducted as part of the Pneumonia Patient Outcomes Research Team (PORT) multicenter, prospective cohort study of ambulatory and hospitalized patients with community-acquired pneumonia.
Results
Of the 944 outpatients and 1343 inpatients enrolled in the Pneumonia PORT cohort study, 927 (98.2%) outpatients and 1328 (98.9%) inpatients with information on antimicrobial therapy prescribed for the 30 days following presentation were included in this study.
Discussion
This study demonstrated that antimicrobial therapy for patients with community-acquired pneumonia varied markedly by site. These variations in prescribing practices led to large differences in the costs of antimicrobial therapy across treatment sites that were unexplained by differences in patient demographic characteristics, comorbidity, or severity of illness at presentation. It appears that the specific antimicrobial agents prescribed rather than the number of agents prescribed or treatment
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Elmer Holzinger, MD, for coordinating study activities at St. Francis Medical Center; Karen Lahive, MD, for coordinating study activities at the Harvard Community Health Plan; Linda Hough, MPH, project coordinator; Terry Sefcik, MS, data manager; and the following clinical research assistants for cohort study patient enrollment and data collection: Mary Walsh, RN, and Donna Polenik, MPH, in Pittsburgh; Mary Ungaro, RN, Leila Haddad, AB, and
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- fn1
This work was part of the Pneumonia Patient Outcomes Research Team (PORT) project funded by a grant (R01 HSO6468) from the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research. Dr. Fine was supported as a Robert Wood Johnson Generalist Physician Faculty Scholar.