In March 2010, the European Respiratory Society funded a pilot audit programme of the process and outcomes of hospital care for patients admitted with exacerbations of COPD and on the organisation of care at hospital level. Originally it was intended to involve just five countries in this pilot scheme but such was the enthusiasm from national societies that 13 participated in the data collection programme. In March 2012, ERS published a document containing the results at national level for 19,021 cases entered into the audit database and subsequently site specific data has been distributed to each of the 422 hospitals that participated as shown in figure 1.
Hospitals participating in the European COPD Audit.
These data are unique in that they have been collected by clinicians prospectively identifying cases then recording in hospital care processes and patient outcomes at 90 days after admission date. In order to collect the data, many individuals had to use their time and skills but the success of the data collection is testimony to the enthusiasm of clinicians to better understand the quality of care delivered in their own institutions. The results are salutary and deserve our attention. In essence, they describe a standard of care with significant variation in adherence to guideline standards both within countries and between them. Arterial blood gases are taken on admission in only 12% cases in one country ranging to 96% in another whilst antibiotics are given to only 54% cases in country A yet 95% in country B. Unsurprisingly, outcomes vary equally widely with median length of stay at national level varying 5–15 days. At this stage in the data analysis, it is not possible to say why this occurs and there may be a number of explanations. There are certainly significant differences in case mix between …
