Health Highlights: Sept. 11, 2014

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Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by the editors of HealthDay:

Hospitals Overprescribing Antibiotics, Study Shows

Antibiotics are being widely overprescribed in U.S. hospitals, a new study says.

The infection-fighting drugs are being given to patients too often, and many doctors are using more than one antibiotic to fight serious infections when it’s not necessary, researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report in the October issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology.

Along with risking patient safety because of the growing threat of antibiotic resistance, the practice cost an extra $163 million, the study said.

In the retrospective analysis, pharmacy data from 2008-2011 at more than 500 hospitals showed that 78 percent of them had examples of potentially unnecessary combinations of antibiotics being given for two or more days, with a total of more than 32,000 cases of redundant antibiotics treatment.

Overall, that added up to almost 150,000 days of potentially inappropriate antibiotic therapy and $13 million in unneeded health care costs. Extrapolated to all U.S. hospitals over the same time period, an estimated $163 million could have been saved through appropriate prescribing, the researchers noted.

“Eliminating these unnecessarily duplicative antibiotic therapies is a simple way that all facilities can both protect their patients and save health care dollars,” said Dr. Arjun Srinivasan, associate director for Healthcare Associated Infection Prevention Programs in the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion at the CDC, MarketWatch reported.

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