Antibiotic Prescribing for Acute Respiratory Infections in Direct-to-Consumer Telemedicine Visits

Published in: JAMA Internal Medicine, v. 175, no. 7, July 2015, p. 1234-1235. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2015.2024

Posted on RAND.org on March 28, 2017

by Lori Uscher-Pines, Andrew W. Mulcahy, David Cowling, Gerald Paul Hunter, Rachel M. Burns, Ateev Mehrotra

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This article was published outside of RAND. The full text of the article can be found at the link above.

Research Question

  1. Do in-office physicians prescribe antibiotics for acute respiratory infection differently than Teledoc (telemedicine) providers?

Patterns of antibiotic prescribing behavior show that both telemedicine and office-based clinicians over-prescribed antibiotics to treat acute respiratory infections, but telemedicine clinicians tended to prescribe broad-spectrum antibiotics.

Key Findings

  • Overall, antibiotics were prescribed at about the same rate by office-based physicians and Teledoc providers.
  • Both settings had high rates of antibiotics prescribed inappropriately for conditions such as bronchitis.
  • Teledoc providers prescribed broad-spectrum antibiotics more often than office-based physicians, which may be a conservative practice in response to having little diagnostic information.
  • Timely feedback to physicians could help adjust provider behavior, and patient educational campaigns could help reduce consumer demand.
Access further information on this document at JAMA Internal Medicine

This article was published outside of RAND. The full text of the article can be found at the link above.

This report is part of the RAND Corporation external publication series. Many RAND studies are published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals, as chapters in commercial books, or as documents published by other organizations.

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