Antibiotic Stewardship
The Urgent Care Foundation, along with the Urgent Care Association and the College of Urgent Care Medicine, is committed to Antibiotic Stewardship in Urgent Care to help achieve the strategic objectives of the World Health Organization (WHO) global action plan for addressing antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
Since 2022, UCF has utilized grant funding from the CDC to support Antibiotic Stewardship in Urgent Care. The latest resources are here.
Urgent Care clinicians make clinical prescribing decisions for over 210 million patients each year. However, around 30% of antibiotics prescribed in outpatient settings are unnecessary, according to the CDC.
STI Education
Last year, focus groups were held with Urgent Care clinicians to learn more about the state of Sexually Transmitted Infections care and its barriers and opportunities. Additionally, a Syphilis Toolkit for Urgent Care Professionals, produced by Chembio with BioSynex Group, was added to the UCA Learning Center.
CDC Grant Project
In May 2022, The Urgent Care Foundation (UCF) was awarded a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to further Antibiotic Stewardship (ABS). This grant – the inaugural federal award for UCF — will fund Urgent Care Association (UCA) and College of Urgent Care Medicine (CUCM) ABS activities as part of a five-year cooperative agreement with the CDC (2020-2025).
The CDC and UCA, with the CUCM and UCF, have a strong history of promoting ABS in the industry, starting a partnership in 2018. All came together at that time, with the Antibiotic Resistance Action Center (ARAC) of the Milken Institute of Public Health at George Washington University (GWU), to present the ABS Symposium at the first annual Fall Urgent Care Clinical Consortium. In 2019, CUCM published an Antibiotic Stewardship Toolkit. That same year, UCA and CUCM incorporated ABS into quality Accreditation, with a specialized Antibiotic Stewardship Commendation program.
This cooperative grant builds on the momentum to further awareness of ABS and provide support to Urgent Care clinicians and centers to continue moving the needle on mitigating antimicrobial resistance.
UCA and CUCM reviewed and updated the Antibiotic Stewardship Toolkit to address the most recent data from the CDC to inform best practices. A webinar on ABS best practices was hosted, with experts from the CDC, Illinois Department of Public Health, and Seattle Children’s Center for Clinical and Translational Research, and recorded as an enduring resource for clinicians.
UCA, with the support of ARAC, is leading an ABS Quality Improvement program. Participating Urgent Care centers are provided a guided experience to implement effective ABS and measure qualified improvement. Each center and their clinicians receive complimentary resources and educational materials for staff and patient education needs, personalized feedback and mapped center data trends.
UCA, UCF and CUCM developed and beta-tested a new Antibiotic Stewardship Program Implementation Kit. Research showed that Urgent Care clinician knowledge of ABS principles is high, but implementation of programs needed additional support. The Implementation Kit includes robust resources to establish benchmarks, measure against them and coach clinicians toward improvement.
