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BOC’s Remote Pulmonary Rehabilitation Offer in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic – An All Service Evaluation (ID 282)

Kensington MJ, Hollier SE

BOC Healthcare

Funding: None

Abstract

Pulmonary Rehabilitation (PR) was forced to stop functioning as usual due to the COVID-19 pandemic. BTS recommended developing ways to work remotely to provide ongoing care and treatment. BOC has 11 PR services nationally and quickly developed an innovative remote programme offer to support their respiratory patients. The service evaluation reviews the outcomes of BOC’s offering to better understand the integrity and validity of this remote programme and its place in future service development. This is measured through patient safety, sit to stand test (STS), CAT scores, PHQ9, and GAD7 outcome measures.
The programme was a remote telephone based programme including initial assessment (IA), outcome measures, class 1 with individualised exercise prescription, 6 weeks of twice weekly class calls, and a discharge session. All patients with a remote IA between 1st April 2020 and 30th September were included in the evaluation.
A total of 1074 patients were included within this service evaluation with 58% (N=619) enrolling onto the remote rehabilitation offer. BOC experienced a completion rate for enrolled patients of 78%. Safety concerns for remote exercise was the 2nd largest reason for patients not enrolling accounting for 29% of patients with 44% not enrolling due to declining the remote offer over waiting for face to face PR.
The results indicate significant improvement in STS with an average 4 improvement, and CAT with an average -4 improvement, both meeting the MCID for these outcomes. 60% and 65% of patients met the MCID respectively. There were no reported safety concerns throughout the evaluation period.
In conclusion, this evaluation demonstrates clinical meaningful improvements for patients with no adverse safety concerns. The remote offer has been shown as a viable adjunct to traditional PR which could be used in any further pandemics or for those unable to access gold standard PR care.

Conflicts of interest: Siobhan Hollier - Member of PCRS Education Committee and Respiratory Leaders Programme Board
Michael Kensington - None

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