Quality, costs and cultural beliefs in outpatient treatment with parenteral antibiotics: a comment.
The introduction of outpatient parenteral antibiotic therapy (OPAT) will change the concepts of a hospital and of primary health care. When it is guaranteed by a number of general quality conditions, and short-term transformation costs are left aside, it has a good chance of developing in cities where distances between patient's homes and hospitals are shorter. Cultural beliefs of health care providers in hospitals and in primary health care are an important barrier for the introduction of OPAT. Perhaps countries with hospital-oriented health care systems (Germany, Sweden, USA) will start earlier with OPAT than countries with a strong and independent primary health-care system (the UK, Finland and The Netherlands). On the other hand, the last three countries are better equipped to integrate OPAT into other types of home health service.
Schrijvers
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Department of Health Sciences and Epidemiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Utrecht, P.O. Box 80046, 3508 TA Utrecht, Netherlands.
van der Linden
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