Parents who utilize Eastern Michigan University’s Children Institute should be cautious. A new study shows American pediatricians write more than 10 million unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions each year, contributing to potentially dangerous drug resistance.
Campus departments such as Snow Health Center and University Health Services do not treat children under 18 — they only tend to students, faculty and staff. Certain private Ypsilanti practices, however, are under question, and the statistics have caused parents to second guess preceding and impending treatments of young family members.
Most sources preferred to keep the names of family practices confidential, although they had no reservations of confessing legitimate fears.
After Yspilanti resident Sonya Grey heard the recent news, she had only one question on her mind: “How do I know that my kids are properly diagnosed?”
To gather information, researchers looked at roughly 65,000 outpatient visits nationwide of children under 18 during a two-year span until 2008. Doctors, in total, prescribed an antibiotic one in every five visits, mostly for children with respiratory complications such as sinus infections and pneumonia.
Some of those infections were caused by bacteria, warranting antibiotics. But almost one-quarter of all antibiotic prescriptions were given to children with respiratory conditions that probably or definitely do not call for antibiotics, such as bronchitis, the flu, asthma and allergies.
According to one study from the University of Utah (Salt Lake City), it results in more than 10 million antibiotic prescriptions per year that would likely do more harm than good.
This raised another question in Grey, an intermittent client of the Children Institute at EMU.
“Why can I feel at ease right now?” Grey asked. “It’s hard enough to trust a doctor, let alone the drugs they’re prescribing your kids. It’s like finding a babysitter. Until you find a good one, you’re going to feel uneasy, which is why I have used the Children’s Institute when I’ve needed to; it’s a reliable place.”
Half of all the antibiotics prescribed were “broad-spectrum” drugs, which act against a wide range of bacteria – killing more of the good bacteria in the bodies as well and perhaps setting the child up for more serious infections with antibiotic-resistant bacteria later on.
For new mother Anita Perez, the problem brought up issues of cost-effectiveness.
“Prescriptions aren’t cheap, so I’d rather not throw my money away at something that could eventually hurt my babies,” she said. “I can’t stand the thought of knowing that I paid for something that made them sicker.”
According to data released from the Kaiser Family Foundation in 2010, spending in the U.S. for prescription drugs was $234.1 billion in 2008 — nearly six times the amount spent in 1990. Until 2010, prescriptions were one of the fastest growing components of national health care spending.
Increases, in fact, can be seen across the board.
The Kaiser Family Foundation also reports “the number of prescriptions dispensed in the U.S. in 2009 increased 2.1 percent – from 3.8 billion to 3.9 billion – a larger growth rate than the 1.0 percent increase in 2008 over 2007. From 1999 to 2009, the number of prescriptions increased 39 percent – from 2.8 billion to 3.9 billion – compared to a U.S. population growth of 9.0 percent. The average number of retail prescriptions per capita increased from 10.1 in 1999 to 12.6 in 2009.”
Another Ypsilanti parent of two children, Tracie Hughes, voiced her concerns. Long-term issues have been renting the most space in her thoughts surrounding recent data.
“Over my dead body will my kids get addicted to pills,” Hughes said. “Their daddy got hooked and he’s out of our lives now. I don’t like to worry about it since they’re so young, but you can only give a kid random prescriptions so many times before they learn bad habits.”
Given the Kaiser Family data, it’s a legitimate problem that has only continued to worsen.
The rate of unfilled prescriptions, for example, has increased, for both denials – prescriptions that have been submitted to a pharmacy but rejected by a patient’s health plan and abandonment – and abandonment – those that are submitted to a pharmacy but are never picked up.
The report read:
“Health plan denials of commercial prescription claims in 2009 were 8.1 percent for new prescriptions and 4.2 percent for refills; denials of new brand name drug prescriptions –
10.3% in 2009 – were down 1.4 percent from 2008, but were up 22.5 percent since 2006.
Abandoned prescriptions as a percent of commercial prescription drug claims were 6.3 percent
for new prescriptions and 2.6 percent for refills in 2009; for new brand name prescriptions, the abandonment rate was up 23 percent from 2008 and up 68 percent from 2006.
“Together, health plan denials and patient abandonment resulted in 14.4 percent of all new, commercial plan prescriptions going unfilled in 2009, up 5.5 percent from 2008.”
That being said, Grey has decided to check with resources from now on.
“I’ll be asking pharmacies at places, like Snow Health, what the best thing to do is when it comes to treatment,” she said. “I don’t want to become a victim of yet another problem in our country’s health system.”
Then she suggested probably the most common fool-proof method: waiting several days and checking the child again.
“There’s no shame in asking if it’s safe to wait a few days for additional tests rather than starting the antibiotic right away,” she said. “If it’ll help your son or daughter get back to feeling well and playing like normal, parents should learn how to ask the right questions.”
