Airwaves
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
In this month’s issue we publish the timely British Thoracic Society (BTS) guidelines on intermediate care in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which refer to the treatment models bridging the interface between hospital and community care. Intermediate care is multidisciplinary and requires organisation and cooperation of various healthcare professionals. Recent healthcare policies in the UK have emphasised the importance of transferring more care out of hospital, although, as the guidelines point out, there are many questions still to be addressed about the service development and implementation. I am sure you will find these guidelines very useful in your local practice and the concept of "hospital at home" encompasses both admission avoidance and early discharge in COPD patients at exacerbations. The challenge for all of us interested in the care of COPD patients is to ensure that we develop and evaluate carefully any "intermediate" interventions.
See page 200
Randomised controlled trial
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
Services
- Email this link to a friend
- Similar articles in this journal
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Bookmark with
Register for free content
The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.
Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.
