Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is a long term progressive lung disease that means the person suffers from long term breathing problems. Covid-19 can be extremely dangerous for this group of patients, risking serious complications, hospital admission and occasionally death. These risks increase significantly when a patient is also living in an area of deprivation.

The COPD pilot, conducted during the Autumn/Winter 2022 Campaign, aimed to ensure complete patient autonomy and increase vaccine uptake by allowing open, trusted conversation about covid vaccination. The approach was to offer a “COPD health check” in the comfort of the patients home, looking at general health as well as offering any extra services the patient had outstanding (eg. bloods). Once a rapport was built, the patient was offered their booster.

In an effort to reach more patients, PCL was commissioned for the project. PCL provided project management and patient contact support. Through collaboration with various stakeholders, including the Population Health Management team, PCL were able to locate the exact practices with the highest numbers of patients with COPD.

The project resulted in 60% of patients visited being vaccinated with 10% of those being their first dose! These figures demonstrate the success of the project by giving additional protection for this “at risk” cohort of patients. It also gave an amazing opportunity to offer other advice and services in line with our MECC (Making Every Contact Count) agenda, which is something we aim to build upon in the future.