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Implementation of Urinalysis with Reflex Culture Order Sets Associated with Fewer Outpatient Antibiotics for Urinary Tract Infections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2025

Lauren Johansen
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University
Charles Oertil
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University School of Medicine
Tom Talbot
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University School of Medicine
Sophie Katz
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Jennifer Cihlar
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Rebecca Stern
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Nico Herrera
Affiliation:
VUMC
Titus Daniels
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Kaitlyn Reasoner
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Andrea Ito
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Michael Zou
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University
Sharon Onguti
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University
Milner Staub
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University Medical Center

Abstract

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Background: Urinalysis with reflex culture order sets (reflex order set) require urinalyses to meet specific criteria before triggering a culture to reduce unnecessary urine cultures and inappropriate treatment of asymptomatic bacteriuria (ASB). A reflex order set was designed and implemented at a large academic medical center in 2016 and updated in June 2022 to require clinicians to select which pre-specified exemption the patient met to bypass the reflex order set and order a urine culture. We aimed to assess the association between reflex order set bypass and antibiotic prescribing for urinary tract infections (UTIs) in outpatient encounters. Methods: Patient demographics, co-morbidities, encounter diagnoses, and treatment data, including required antibiotic indications, were extracted from all outpatient healthcare system adult and pediatric patient encounters utilizing the reflex order set. Using multivariable logistic aggression, we assessed associated odds with 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) of bypassing the reflex order set and antibiotic prescribing for UTI. Results: From June 2022 to June 2024, 192,310 encounters met inclusion criteria. After adjusting for patient factors, bypassing the reflex order set was associated with higher odds (2.87 95% CI: 2.81 to 2.94) of antibiotic prescribing for UTI. Increasing age, female gender, indwelling catheter, history of urological surgery, UTI, and neurogenic bladder were associated with increased prescribing. Being on immunosuppression, pregnancy, pending urological surgery, renal transplant status and chronic kidney disease were associated with reduced odds of antibiotic prescribing (Table 1). Discussion: Urinalysis reflex order set implementation in a large ambulatory clinic system was associated with lower likelihood of antibiotic prescribing for UTI. Further analysis will evaluate accuracy of selected bypass indications and appropriateness of antibiotic prescriptions to identify opportunities for optimizing this intervention.

Information

Type
Antibiotic Stewardship
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America