Personalised and safe care, delivering a better experience for people living with COPD

Tackling overuse, misuse and underuse in COPD

COPD treatment at system and individual level is often characterised by overuse (e.g. oral steroids and antibiotics), misuse (e.g. oxygen, inhaled steroids for those who won't benefit as well as those who will) and underuse (e.g. smoking cessation and pulmonary rehabilitation) and these elements together provide poor value healthcare. This runs counter to the IPCRG vision that, through universal access to right care, everyone can breathe and feel well.

Here, we use the concept of Right Care as explained by the Lancet series 2017: “the shared challenge is ensuring the right care is received by the right patients, in the right setting, at the right time, at the right cost.” We would add “in the right way”.  The important point is to note that this means addressing both underuse of high value interventions and overuse of low value or harmful interventions.