Admission avoidance using intramuscular antibiotics for the treatment of borderline foot infections in people with diabetes in a tertiary care foot clinic

Several international guidelines exist to help decision making for the infected ‘diabetic foot’. However, none consider admissions avoidance. We wanted to develop an antibiotic foot formulary for the empirical treatment of diabetes related foot infections presenting to our service and subsequently to asses the costs associated with the introduction of our protocol. We rationalised our antibiotic protocol. The introduction of our formulary changed the average antibiotic prescribing costs for a 3 week course of treatment from £17.12 to £16.42. In addition, we adapted the Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA) guideline by introducing a category of ‘moderate infection - borderline admission’ to our classification. This enabled the administration of outpatient intramuscular antibiotics. Over 22 months of follow up, 26 episodes were eligible for treatment with intramuscular antibiotics. Over the same time period, 121 people were admitted directly from the foot clinic. The costs saved as a result of avoided or delayed admission for those 26 episodes was over £76,000. For 12 people who required subsequent admission, their length of hospital stay was significantly shorter than those admitted directly (9.25 days [range 2–25] vs. 16.11 [2–64] p=0.045). In summary, by modifying the IDSA classification and adopting a protocol to administer outpatient oral and intramuscular antibiotics we have led to substantial cost savings, shorter hospital admissions and also have developed a successful admissions avoidance strategy.