Improving Early Recognition of Coccidioidomycosis in Urgent Care Clinics: Analysis of an Implemented Education Program

Overview

Journal Open Forum Infect Dis

Specialty Infectious Diseases

Date 2023 Feb 3

PMID 36733697

Authors

Jie Pu

Valerie Miranda

Devin Minior

Shane Reynolds

Benjamin Rayhorn

Katherine D Ellingson

John N Galgiani

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Background: Only 0.2% of coccidioidomycosis (CM) diagnoses were made in patients (pts) with pneumonia (PNA) in urgent care (UC), because they were not being tested for CM. Our objective in this study was to improve CM testing rates.

Methods: This was a time series of clinician practice before and after an intervention that occurred at UC clinics in Phoenix and Tucson Arizona. All patients in UC were >18 years old. We included information about CM in periodic educational activities for clinicians. Coccidioidal serologic testing (CST), CST results, and their relation to (ICD-10) codes were extracted from medical records.

Results: Urgent care received 2.1 million visits from 1.5 million patients. The CST orders per 10 visits increased from 5.5 to 19.8 ( < .0001). Percentage positive CSTs were highest for August, November, and December (17.0%) versus other months (10.6%). Positive CSTs were associated with PNA ICD-10 codes, and, independently, for (EN) which had the highest positivity rate (61.4%). Testing of PNA pts increased on first visits and on second visits when the first CST was negative. Yearly rates of PNA due to CM ranged from 17.3% to 26.0%. Despite this improvement, CST was still not done for over three quarters of pts with PNA. This was a noncomparative study.

Conclusions: Routine quality improvement activities have significantly but only partially improved rates of testing pts with PNA for CM in UC clinics located in a highly endemic area. Innovative strategies may be needed to improve current practice. Also in our region, EN, independent of PNA, is a strong predictor of CM.

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