A post-acute respiratory outreach service.

This paper describes an outreach nursing service for patients discharged from a Sydney hospital after treatment for an acute episode of chronic airflow limitation (CAL) and people referred for early exacerbation of the condition. In its first two years, 395 patients received the home-based service. The readmission rate of these patients within 28 days of discharge was approximately half that of the hospital's CAL patients in the year before the service was available. The cost of the outreach service in 1994-5 and 1995-6 was 36% and 61% lower respectively than the cost of hospitalizing the estimated 57 patients whose admission or readmission to hospital was avoided because their conditioned was managed at home by the outreach service.