Determining local service levels for a pulmonary rehabilitation service for patients with COPD
Benchmarks for a standard population
Experience of current practice suggests that the benchmark population rate for uptake of pulmonary rehabilitation would be 0.23% per year, or 230 per 100,000 per year. However, commissioners should take into account local socioeconomic and demographic factors such as age and smoking, and recognise that COPD is under-diagnosed in the population.
For a standard primary care trust population of 250,000, the average number of people expected to receive pulmonary rehabilitation annually is likely to be 575.
For an average practice with a list size of 10,000, the average number of people expected to receive pulmonary rehabilitation annually is likely to be 23.
This service is likely to fall under the programme budgeting category 211A (problems of the respiratory system - obstructive airways disease).
Examine the assumptions used in estimating these figures.
Use the pulmonary rehabilitation commissioning and benchmarking tool to determine the level of service that might be needed locally and to calculate the cost of commissioning the service using the indicative benchmark and/or your own local data.
Further information
Sources of further information to help you in assessing local health needs and reducing health inequalities include:
- Department of Health ‘Delivering quality and value - focus on benchmarking'.
- NICE ‘Health equity audit - learning from practice briefing'.
- The ‘Practice-based commissioning comparators reporting service' provides access to a range of indicators and activity data at practice level, enabling a better understanding of local commissioning activity, referral patterns and outcomes.
- The ‘Disease management information toolkit (DMIT)' is a good-practice tool for decision-makers, commissioners and deliverers of care for people with long-term conditions, which presents data on conditions that contribute to high numbers of emergency bed days. It models the effects of possible interventions that may be commissioned at a local level and helps users to consider the likely impact of commissioning options.
- ‘PARR (Patients at risk of re-hospitalisation)' is a risk prediction system for use by primary care trusts to identify patients at high risk of hospital re-admission.
- PRIMIS+ provides support to general practices on information management, recording for, and analysis of, data quality, plus a comparative analysis service focused on key clinical topics.
This page was last updated: 30 March 2010
- Commissioning a pulmonary rehabilitation service for patients with COPD
- Specifying a pulmonary rehabilitation service for patients with COPD
- Determining local service levels for a pulmonary rehabilitation service for patients with COPD
- Assumptions used in estimating a population benchmark
- The commissioning and benchmarking tool
- Ensuring corporate and quality assurance
