COPD clinic aims to reduce rehospitalization following acute exacerbations

Key takeaways:

• Rehospitalization rates are generally high following acute exacerbations of COPD.
• A clinic aims to reduce these rates by having patients seen within 2 weeks of discharge.

HONOLULU — The implementation of a post-acute exacerbation COPD clinic reduced hospital readmissions, according to a poster presented at the CHEST Annual Meeting.

“We know there’s a high rate of readmission for COPD patients and that recurrent hospitalization leads to quicker deterioration of lung function and the overall health in these patients,” Mollie Anderson, APRN, FNP, a nurse practitioner at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) and the poster’s lead author, told Healio.

Vanderbilt created a post-acute exacerbation (AE) COPD clinic aimed at reducing rehospitalization rates. Patients who were hospitalized for an AE were scheduled to be seen at the clinic within 14 days of discharge.

From October 2022 to March 2023, 64 patients qualified for the clinic and, of these patients, 39 were scheduled and 24 were seen.

The 30-day readmission rate at VUMC dropped from 12.5% during the period between July 2021 and June 2022 to 11.4% during the period between July 2022 and March 2023. Moreover, for the patients seen in the post-AECOPD clinic, only one patient was readmitted, for a rate of 4.2%.

Scheduling and no-shows were the biggest limitations to the clinic’s success, according to Anderson.

“Post-exacerbation follow-up clinics can decrease the rate of readmission and our goal for the future is to try to get more patients into these clinics through different methods,” Anderson said.