Monitoring and treating AECOPD in primary care

The objective of the Co-RIG II project is to support primary care physicians treat their patients at home—and out of hospitals—where possible. The focus is on patients experiencing acute exacerbations of COPD (AECOPD). This project began in July 2021, and will be wrapping up at the end of December 2023. 

This project brought together an expert panel of specialist and primary care clinicians to develop a clinical care pathway for monitoring and treatment of AECOPD in primary care. They developed and curated accessible COPD resources for patients and clinicians to form the pathway. 

In partnership with IT, they created a longitudinal AECOPD monitoring form that can be used with OSCAR EMR, and will be launched within the next few weeks. The team also partnered with family physicians at a local clinic to pilot the clinical pathway with their AECOPD patients. They are also working with clinicians and COPD education programs to recruit patient volunteers to provide their feedback, thoughts and perspectives surrounding the clinical pathway and patient resources. As this project comes to an end, the Co-RIG II team hopes that this work can be used to help support primary care clinicians and COPD patients experiencing acute exacerbations—and to ease strain on emergency rooms and hospitals as COVID-19 and flu case numbers grow over the coming winter months.