
Author: Neil Fearn
Dated: 25/2/2015
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) refers to a number of progressive conditions including chronic bronchitis, emphysema as well as chronic obstructive airways disease. Whilst treatment can help to manage COPD, there is no cure.
The recently published national COPD clinical audit report COPD: who cares matters, highlights that there have been some important improvements in the care for COPD patients over the past six years, it is still not good enough.
Statistics show that hospital deaths caused by COPD have reduced from 7.8% in 2008 to 4.3% in 2014 and that the duration of hospital admissions have reduced from five to four days over the same time.
Despite this, it was found that the standards of care differ greatly across England and Wales and which has resulted in some patients having little or no access to specialist respiratory care.
The audit found that 45% of patients were discharged within three days, many of whom had no contact with respiratory specialists, and one in five patients were not seen by a respiratory expert at all during their stay.
Weekend care was also identified as an issue, with less chance of being seen by the respiratory team and fewer patients being discharged.
The audit showed that patients received much better evidence-based care when seen by respiratory specialist and the conclusion was that there appears to be less emphasis on whole‐case management and the important application of evidence‐based care during hospital admission, which will impact upon the longer‐term outcomes.
For more information: https://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/projects/national-copd-audit-programme-starting-2013