Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
(asked on 19th January 2026) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the answer of 22 December 2025 to question 99733, how many of those admissions were readmissions within (a) 30 and (b) 90 days of initial hospitalisation.
The Department has not conducted a specific assessment of the drivers of hospital admissions for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) for 2024/25. In general, COPD is commonly worsened by smoking, occupational exposure, and poor air quality, and exacerbations are often triggered by respiratory infections including flu, pneumococcal disease, and COVID‑19.
There are a range of measures in place to help reduce preventable COPD admissions. The Tobacco and Vapes Bill represents the most significant public health intervention since the 2007 indoor smoking ban and will support our ambition for a smokefree United Kingdom. The Department is also working across Government to tackle air pollution and address poor housing conditions including damp and mould. The National Health Service is running winter vaccination campaigns against key respiratory infections including COVID-19, flu and pneumococcal disease, which can trigger COPD. Further, pulmonary rehabilitation is a proven intervention that improves symptoms and reduces hospital admissions for people with COPD. NHS England’s commissioning standards ensure services are high quality, equitable, and reduce health inequalities.
More broadly, our 10-Year Health plan sets out the new neighbourhood health model to expand urgent care at home and in the community, which will reduce unnecessary hospital visits and admissions, thereby improving patient experience. To enable this, and deliver faster diagnosis and earlier access to treatment, access to spirometry tests in community diagnostic centres (CDCs) is growing and will continue to do so as more sites come online. The first five months of 2025/26 saw an increase in CDC spirometry testing of approximately 2,000 tests per month more than in the previous year.
Regarding readmissions, the information is not publicly available in the format requested. NHS England publishes annual data on the total number of readmissions in England within 30 days for 2024/25, but this is not broken down by diagnosis. This information can be found at the following link: