Enhancing use and delivery of pulmonary rehabilitation

Pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) is an effective treatment for patients with chronic respiratory diseases, eliciting improvements in key health outcomes for patients including symptoms, exercise tolerance, and quality of life. Despite its well-documented benefits and recommendations for its use in clinical guidelines, PR is grossly underutilized worldwide. This chapter provides an overview of the factors that contribute to poor patient referral, uptake and completion of PR programmes. It also reviews the current research focused on improving referral rates by increasing knowledge and awareness of PR among healthcare professionals, patients and payers. In addition, it collates the evidence on strategies that have been implemented to enhance patient access and uptake to PR programmes, and addresses approaches to ensure quality of PR programmes.