Importance: Antibiotics are frequently and often inappropriately prescribed to patients in nursing homes. These antibiotics pose direct risks to recipients and indirect risks to others residing in the home.
Objective: To examine whether living in a nursing home with high antibiotic use is associated with an increased risk of antibiotic-related adverse outcomes for individual residents.
Design, setting, and participants: In this longitudinal open-cohort study performed from January 1, 2010, through December 31, 2011, we studied 110,656 older adults residing in 607 nursing homes in Ontario, Canada.
Exposures: Nursing home-level antibiotic use was defined as use-days per 1000 resident-days, and facilities were classified as high, medium, and low use according to tertile of use. Multivariable logistic regression modeling was performed to assess the effect of nursing home-level antibiotic use on the individual risk of antibiotic-related adverse outcomes.
Main outcomes and measures: Antibiotic-related harms included Clostridium difficile, diarrhea or gastroenteritis, antibiotic-resistant organisms (which can directly affect recipients and indirectly affect nonrecipients), allergic reactions, and general medication adverse events (which can affect only recipients).
Results: Antibiotics were provided on 2,783,000 of 50,953,000 resident-days in nursing homes (55 antibiotic-days per 1000 resident-days). Antibiotic use was highly variable across homes, ranging from 20.4 to 192.9 antibiotic-days per 1000 resident-days. Antibiotic-related adverse events were more common (13.3%) in residents of high-use homes than among residents of medium-use (12.4%) or low-use homes (11.4%) (P < .001); this trend persisted even among the residents who did not receive antibiotic treatments. The primary analysis indicated that residence in a high-use nursing home was associated with an increased risk of a resident experiencing an antibiotic-related adverse event (adjusted odds ratio, 1.24; 95% CI, 1.07-1.42; P = .003). A sensitivity analysis examining nursing home-level antibiotic use as a continuous variable confirmed an increased risk of resident-level antibiotic-related harms (adjusted odds ratio, 1.004 per additional day of nursing home antibiotic use; 95% CI, 1.001-1.006; P = .01).
Conclusions and relevance: Antibiotic use is highly variable across nursing homes; residents of high-use homes are exposed to an increased risk of antibiotic-related harms even if they have not directly received these agents. Antibiotic stewardship is needed to improve the safety of all nursing home residents.