Urgent Care Management of Respiratory Illness Enabled With Novel Testing Pathway

Plain-language summary

Rapid diagnosis and precise treatment have become possible with multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) panels that can identify a variety of causative agents of acute respiratory illnesses such as bacterial and viral infections in one urgent care visit. While real-time PCR is currently used as a standard for diagnosing acute respiratory illnesses such as influenza due to its high sensitivity and specificity, it typically takes several hours for results which is unfavorable in the urgent care setting. Highly sensitive and rapid random-access PCR tests provide the sensitivity and specificity needed to both rapidly and accurately diagnose acute respiratory illnesses. Similar PCR panels have been used in previous research for the diagnosis of gastrointestinal illnesses in the emergency department and point-of-care testing for hospitalized adults presenting with acute respiratory illness. In this study, the investigators aim to determine if a rapid multiplex PCR test for urgent care patients with symptomatic upper respiratory infections can improve patient and provider-reported outcomes. This study utilizes the Biofire® FilmArray Panel (RP2.1-EZ) which in previous studies has been shown to be highly effective in diagnosing acute respiratory illnesses.

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