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Antimicrobial drug resistance, rather than the emergence of new infectious agents, may be the most daunting infectious disease problem confronting current and future world populations. Excessive and unwarranted antimicrobial dispensing is a major contributor to this problem.
To assess antibiotic prescribing in the outpatient setting in the U.S., investigators used a classification scheme of diagnosis codes from the latest International Classification of Diseases–Clinical Modification (ICD-10-CM) and insurance claims data on 19 million privately insured patients (age, ≤64 years; 76% adults) in 2016.
Results were as follows:
Among 15.5 million antibiotic prescriptions filled by this cohort, 13% were classified as appropriate based on the coded d…