Expanding Antimicrobial Stewardship to Urgent Care Centers Through a Pharmacist-Led Culture Follow-up Program

Urgent care centers represent a high-volume outpatient setting where antibiotics are prescribed frequently but resources for antimicrobial stewardship may be scarce. In 2015, our pharmacist-led Emergency Department (ED) culture follow-up program was expanded to include two urgent care (UC) sites within the same health system. The UC program is conducted by ED and infectious diseases clinical pharmacists as well as PGY1 pharmacy residents using a collaborative practice agreement (CPA). The purpose of this study was to describe the pharmacist-led UC culture follow-up program and its impact on pharmacist workload. This retrospective, descriptive study included all patients discharged to home from UC with a positive culture from any site resulting between 1 January and 31 December 2016. Data collected included the culture type, presence of intervention, and proportion of interventions made under the CPA. Additionally, pharmacist workload was reported as the number of call attempts made, new prescriptions written, and median time to complete follow-up per patient. Data were reported using descriptive statistics. A total of 1461 positive cultures were reviewed for antibiotic appropriateness as part of the UC culture follow-up program, with 320 (22%) requiring follow-up intervention. Culture types most commonly requiring intervention were urine cultures (25%) and sexually transmitted diseases (25%). A median of 15 min was spent per intervention, with a median of one call (range 1-6 calls) needed to reach each patient. Less than half of patients required a new antimicrobial prescription at follow-up. A pharmacist-led culture follow-up program conducted using a CPA was able to be expanded to UC sites within the same health system using existing clinical pharmacy staff along with PGY1 pharmacy residents. Service expansion resulted in minimal increase in pharmacist workload. Adding UC culture follow-up services to an existing ED program can allow health systems to expand antimicrobial stewardship initiatives to satellite locations.