The Patient Perspective

The team have been so friendly and have always e staff been there for any problem you have, not just breathing related.

I’d like to thank the team for their work. I attended a rehab course before covid, and the new programme is much better. Having experts in to do the talks was a highlight, and I also really liked the new exercises and format. I feel so much better having finished the course. 0

Examples of our revised processes – they underpin our clinical activity and make the journey smoother and safer for patients.

Lessons Learnt

• We have established a new way of supporting patients across the system and have been able to demonstrate this to patients

• There have been unintended consequences which have been really significant:

* we have identified a number of patients at assessment who needed to be referred back to their GP for medical optimisation. In at least one case this enabled early identification of serious issues which could be treated in primary care rather than requiring an admission to hospital following a crisis.

* As we managed to clear our backlog and release capacity to see patients we were able to work with the hospital to support them with their waiting list. This has helped a wider redesign of the whole system pathway for patients needing pulmonary rehab services.

• We’ve learnt a lot about data – including data quality issues associated with the configuration of our patient management system. This is being addressed separately.

• We know that improvement is a continuous journey! Further work needs to be done to upskill more staff on management of the My COPD app and to explore why patients drop out of classes. Could we increase completion rates?

References