Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to reduce chronic obstructive pulmonary disease mortality.

Respiratory diseases, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), are a clinical priority within the NHS Long Term plan and the National Health Service is investing in the provision of more and better rehabilitation services for respiratory patients. This has the objective of improving outcomes for people with COPD through early diagnosis and increased access to treatments. NHS England has established 13 Respiratory Clinical Networks across the country. These have been vital in providing clinical leadership for respiratory services and supporting services in primary care, including restoring spirometry, which is one of the tests used to diagnose COPD.

The NHS RightCare COPD pathway has been rolled out nationally and defines the optimal service for people with COPD. Furthermore, the National Respiratory Audit Programme aims to improve the quality of care, services, and clinical outcomes for patients with asthma and COPD, by collecting and providing data on a range of indicators and pulmonary rehabilitation activity.

A national programme of work is underway to support systems with improving access to pulmonary rehabilitation for the eligible population, increase the capacity of provision to reduce waiting lists, and improve the quality and consistency of rehabilitation programmes through accreditation. Pulmonary rehabilitation is effective for people with COPD, improving exercise capacity or increasing quality of life in 90% patients who complete a programme. National Respiratory Audit Programme data shows that the number of people completing pulmonary rehabilitation in 2023/24 exceeded pre-pandemic levels, an important milestone in the post pandemic service recovery objective.

NHS England is leading on the development of an approach for COPD management to support the proactive identification and management of rising risk patients in winter, to reduce demand on primary and secondary care. The approach fully aligns with a Neighbourhood Health Service model and includes the identification of rising risk patients, optimisation of care, support, and management, through remote monitoring, and a greater focus on self-management and education, as well as access to strengthened support in the community.

The plan is to test and evaluate this approach in four sites this winter, recognising that many other services in the country already implement some of the elements of the approach described, to help inform decisions on winter planning in the future. In Hull and East Yorkshire, one of the selected sites, where this service has been studied in patients following severe COPD exacerbations, patients using this service had significantly fewer emergency department attendances and hospital admissions at three-months, compared with a historical control cohort.