Competition among Physicians and Retail Clinics Drive up Antibiotic Prescribing Rate

February 26, 2015

(Medical Xpress) – Competition among doctors’ offices, urgent care centers and retail medical clinics in wealthy areas of the U.S. often leads to an increase in the number of antibiotic prescriptions written per person, a team led by Johns Hopkins researchers has found. “We found that both the number of physicians per capita and the number of clinics are significant drivers of antibiotic prescription rate,” the researchers say in a report on the findings published online ahead of print in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy.