The Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership’s Community Respiratory Team has been selected as a finalist at the 2017 Scottish Health Awards in association with the Scottish Government and Daily Record. The judging panel noted on the quality and strength of nominations this year.  The awards ceremony will be held at the Edinburgh Corn Exchange on Thursday 2nd November with the event hosted by Fred McCauley. 

The Community Respiratory Team serves Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership and is located in one the most deprived areas of Glasgow, Possilpark.  The team has twenty members and consists of physiotherapists, respiratory nurse specialists, occupational therapists, pharmacists, dieticians and support workers. The service covers the whole of Glasgow City HSCP area, a population of 596,550. 

The Community Respiratory Team was created following a five-year project in primary care and provides a service in the home to people suffering from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).

The focus of the Community Respiratory Team is avoidance of unnecessary hospital admissions.  People living in Glasgow, are more likely to have COPD than any other part of Scotland and the condition accounts for 45, 000 emergency bed days costing £9.5 million to the health board annually which is the highest nationally.   A specialist multidisciplinary team placed in the community to support people having exacerbations of COPD was previously not in existence; people had to be admitted to hospital to receive this support. 

Piloted initially in one sector of the city, the service proved that it could provide safe and quality person centred care that produced significant cost savings. With Scottish Integration Care Funding it expanded to city wide and now has secured permanent funding.  This service transfers the balance of care out of the hospital setting and allows patients to be maintained in their home environment with safe and effective support to allow recovery and rehabilitation.  

Marianne Milligan, Team Leader Community Respiratory Team  explains
“We support patients in their home making sure they have an appropriate level of input and care to safely and effectively help them recover.  We then look at how we can help them to optimise their own health, what they can do to help their symptoms of particularly breathlessness and ensure they have an understanding of their condition so they know how to control their own health.   They often have lack of confidence in how active they can be as breathlessness leads to feelings of anxiety and results in inactivity. By providing them with a rounded approach with all members of the team working towards the patient’s goal we support people to be as active and engaged in their surroundings and community as much as possible and their quality of life is massively enhanced as a result.  Once they have achieved their goal, we discharge them, however patients can then self refer into our service when they are becoming unwell.  This can greatly relieve any anxiety as they know our team, they know who to call and we can see them that day if required.  There are continual increases in patients self-referring into the service and patients are no longer waiting to become so unwell that they need a hospital admission and instead contacting us earlier in their exacerbation.  All these factors are leading to a trend of reductions in hospital admissions being shown in Glasgow”.

The team supports over 1000 patients per year in their own home. Evaluation of the service demonstrated clinically significant improvement after the team’s intervention with patients. There was improvement in level of breathlessness and ability to walk and to complete activities around the home.  The evaluation also showed that around 45 patients per month were supported to prevent hospital admission and the estimated savings from this are £1 Million.

75% GPs reported a reduction in number of home visits and 63% of GPs reported improved patient self-management.

The most important thing for our team is the positive impact on COPD patients’ lives – the link below shows the feedback from one of our patients.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMJAbWCa3Wg