Outpatient Non-Invasive Ventilation For COPD Could Save Hospital Costs

Recent research in Respiration found that administering long-term non-invasive ventilation in an outpatient setting reduced costs and maintained outcomes among patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

“Long-term non-invasive ventilation is an established and increasingly used treatment option for patients with chronic hypercapnic COPD,” Sarah Bettina Schwarz, of the Department of Pneumology at the Cologne-Merheim Hospital in Germany, and colleagues wrote. “Following inpatient non-invasive ventilation establishment, inpatient control visits regularly occur thereafter. However, it remains unclear whether such control visits can also be performed in an outpatient setting, which, in turn, would reduce costs, patient burden and the complications related to hospitalization.”

In order to determine how administration of non-invasive ventilation in an outpatient setting would impact patients, the researchers studied an outpatient clinic located within the hospital in the vicinity of the respiratory care unit.

Study results showed that in 93 cases, or 71.5%, hospital admission for administration of non-invasive ventilation was not required. The researchers noted that patients without hospitalization had better PaCO2 values and Severe Respiratory Insufficiency Questionnaire Summary scores.

“Outpatient control of long-term non-invasive ventilation in a hospital setting is feasible and has the capacity to identify stable COPD patients in whom non-invasive ventilation therapy is sufficient according to predefined criteria,” Dr Schwarz and colleagues concluded.“These patients may not require hospitalization and may account for more than two thirds of cases.”

—David Costill

For more articles like this, visit the COPD Resource Center

For articles by First Report Managed Care, click here

To view the First Report Managed Care print issue, click here