Chronic diseases and compliance with provincial guidelines for outpatient antibiotic prescription in cases of otitis media and respiratory infections: a population-based study of linked data in Quebec, Canada, 2010-2017.

It is possible that prescribing noncompliant prescriptions was sometimes appropriate, but the high frequency of noncompliance suggests room for improvement. Given that variations associated with chronic diseases were small, disease-specific guidelines for antibiotic prescriptions are likely to have a limited impact on compliance.