Does diagnostic testing always decrease antibiotics prescriptions?

F. Antoñanzas, C. A. Juárez-Castelló and R. Rodríguez-Ibeas ()
Additional contact information
F. Antoñanzas: University of La Rioja
C. A. Juárez-Castelló: University of La Rioja
R. Rodríguez-Ibeas: University of La Rioja

The European Journal of Health Economics, 2023, vol. 24, issue 5, No 1, 673-678

Abstract: Abstract Background Empiric prescription to treat infectious diseases in community care settings has caused antibiotics to be overprescribed, increasing antimicrobial resistance (AMR). To reduce antibiotics prescription, the use of point-of-care diagnostic testing (POCT) has been suggested. Methods We present a stylized static theoretical economic model to analyse whether the use of POCT always decreases antibiotics prescriptions. We consider the interaction of a group of doctors who differ in their level of concern about AMR when prescribing with a firm selling a POCT, and we characterize the price set by the manufacturer and doctors’ decision to employ POCT. Results We found that the number of antibiotics prescriptions is not always lower. This result depends on the distribution of the doctors’ concern about AMR as there is a proportion of doctors who use POCT and then prescribe antibiotics while other doctors change their prescribing behaviour after using POCT and stop giving antibiotics to patients who do not benefit from them. When the proportion of patients who need antibiotic treatment is higher than the proportion of doctors who use POCT and stop prescribing unnecessary antibiotics, the number of antibiotics prescriptions is larger. Our analysis also shows that the use of POCT improves health outcomes. Conclusions We should be very careful when we assert that POCT reduces antibiotics prescriptions as there are situations in which the opposite effect occurs.

Keywords: Antibiotics; Prescriptions; Diagnostic tests; Infectious diseases; Antimicrobial resistances (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I11 I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10198-022-01488-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:eujhec:v:24:y:2023:i:5:d:10.1007_s10198-022-01488-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10198/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10198-022-01488-0

Access Statistics for this article

The European Journal of Health Economics is currently edited by J.-M.G.v.d. Schulenburg

More articles in The European Journal of Health Economics from Springer, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().