Urgent Care Centers’ Prescribing Practices Raise Risk of Antibiotic-Resistant Infections

During the healthcare reform debate of a decade ago, urgent care and other innovative patient access ideas, like the retail clinics seen in many chain grocery and pharmacies today, were promoted as a cost-effective alternative to primary care at a time when the nation’s medical schools were graduating fewer and fewer primary care physicians. The combination of fewer primary care physicians and the lack of health insurance was driving a very costly trend in the U.S.—the use of emergency departments for primary care.

The Unnecessary Burden of Prescribing Antibiotics to Asthma Patients without Proof of Infection

By the bioMérieux Connection Editors In addition to promoting antibiotic resistance, a recent study illustrates how giving antibiotics to patients with asthma exacerbation without any documented indication of lung infection can lengthen hospital stay, increase cost of care and result in increased risk for antibiotic-related diarrhea. According to the researchers, this study is the largest …

Newly-Discovered Protein in Platypus Milk Could Help Combat Superbugs

By the bioMérieux Connection Editors In 2010, scientists at Australia’s national science agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), discovered that platypus milk had antimicrobial properties. Now, after 8 years of study, they think they know why. “Platypus are such weird animals that it would make sense for them to have weird biochemistry,” …