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Pharmacist-led OPAT plan reconciliation before discharge reduced 90-day emergency visits and readmissions, enhancing the safety of outpatient antimicrobial therapy.  

A propensity score-weighted analytic study published in June 2025 in the issue of Open Forum Infectious Diseases where the Outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy (OPAT) poses risks for unplanned care due to transition vulnerabilities, prompting pharmacist-led plan reviews before discharge was accomplished.  

Researchers conducted a retrospective study to compare 90-day emergency department (ED) visits, readmissions, and mortality before and after OPAT plan reconciliation implementation.  

They included unique, adult recipients of OPAT discharged to home or a post-acute care facility from an academic hospital before (6/1/2017–6/14/2020) and after (6/15/2020–6/30/2022) implementation of infectious diseases (ID) pharmacist-led OPAT plan review and reconciliation. An analysis was performed between the 2 groups while adjusting for clinical characteristics. Multiple imputation was used to address missing data.  

The results showed that 2,408 recipients of OPAT met the inclusion criteria, with 1,650 in the pre-implementation group and 758 in the post-implementation group. The post-implementation group had lower rates of ED visits (pre: 22.2%; post: 17.8%; P= 0.02) and hospital readmissions (pre: 38.9%; post: 33.4%; P= 0.01) within 90 days of discharge. No significant difference in 90-day all-cause mortality was observed between the 2 groups.  

Investigators concluded that OPAT recipients discharged after ID pharmacist-led plan reconciliation were less likely to have 90-day ED visits or hospital readmissions. 

Source: academic.oup.com/ofid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ofid/ofaf343/8161186