https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7497-7717
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Asher J Schranz, Claire E Farel, Teresa Oosterwyk, Angela Perhac, Alan C Kinlaw, Models of Outpatient Parenteral Antimicrobial Therapy Care: One Size May Not Fit All, Clinical Infectious Diseases, Volume 80, Issue 4, 15 April 2025, Pages 930–931, https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciae419
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We thank White et al for their response to our study [1, 2]. As they note, there is heterogeneity in how outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy (OPAT) care teams, where they exist, are structured. To our knowledge, there is no defined optimal team structure for OPAT, and practice models vary based on clinical need and available resources.
Our OPAT program is part of the clinical arm of the infectious diseases (ID) division at a large academic center. The team is currently staffed by a full-time nurse coordinator (registered nurse), a full-time ID pharmacist (PharmD), and a scheduler, with a rotating group of ID attendings providing oversight and a designated medical director. ID fellows, a nurse practitioner, and pharmacy trainees also contribute to OPAT activities. The team monitors laboratory studies at least weekly per Infectious Disease Society of America guidelines [3].
Some practices have developed tools that are integrated into electronic medical records (EMRs) to facilitate OPAT. Our program does not rely on built-in modifications to Epic, the EMR we use, such as the OPAT Monitoring View for care [4] or a template to group encounters for automated data registry purposes [5]. For clinical activities, we use shared patient lists for tracking, and we implement customized note templates for OPAT treatment plans, laboratory monitoring notes, and documentation of specific adverse events. A data manager abstracts data manually into a Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap) database. Our program's operations may not be generalizable; our processes have been developed through iterative experience, as the program has grown.
