Background and Importance Outpatient antimicrobial therapy (OPAT) programmes are increasingly used to reduce hospitalisation costs in health care facilities.

Aim and Objectives To analyse the clinical impact and cost savings of an OPAT programme focused on self-administration by the patients of antibiotic elastomeric pumps (AEP) prepared in the pharmacy service.

Material and Methods Observational, retrospective study. It included all patients who received OPAT from 1 May 2022 to 31 July 2023, using 30-minute or 24-hour AEP depending on the antimicrobial. Self-administration was offered to all patients with previous training.

Number of patients, episodes and AEP prepared, demographic variables (sex and gender), start and end of treatment (either in the hospital or at home) and hospital-at-home stay, self-administration episodes and source of infection were registered.

The resolution of the infectious syndrome and hospital readmissions at 30 days were evaluated to analyse the clinical impact.

To analyse cost savings, the time needed by pharmacy technicians to prepare AEP and avoided visits (physicians and nurses) for those patients using self-administration were compiled. Costs associated with daily hospital-at-home stay, AEP used and pharmacy technicians´ preparation were compared with costs of hospital stay and physician and nurse visits.

Results 161 patients (172 episodes and 1,442 AEP prepared) were included. 57.7% were men, with a median age of 68 years (IQR 54–81). The median duration of treatment was 9 days (IQR 6–14), and hospital-at-home stay was 8 days (IQR 6–14). 64 patients (39.8%) were included for self-administration. The most common sources were respiratory (25.5%), intra-abdominal (24.8%) and urinary (18.0%).

Resolution and readmission at 30 days were registered in 91.8% and 13.5% of episodes, respectively.

The time needed by pharmacy technicians was 0.2 hours for 30-minutes and 0.3 hours for 24-hour AEP, having a cost of €4,952.20. A total of 590 avoided visits were registered, saving €41,890. Total expenditure of OPAT and hospital-at-home stay was €386,344.60 compared to €1,583,109 for hospital stay and additional visits resulting in €1,196,764.4 of cost savings.

Conclusion and Relevance OPAT programmes pose significant advantages in terms of clinical and economic impact, for managing patients needing longer antimicrobial treatments. Self-administration of AEP is a promising option to optimise their results in clinical practice.

Conflict of Interest No conflict of interest.