Research Article
Collaboration between GP and Pneumologist in the Management of Patients with Chronic Respiratory Diseases: An Interview Study in Germany
Luis Mockel, Laura Maria Schmidt, Kelly
Nieten, Olaf Randerath
Correspondence Address :
Luis Mockel
UCB Pharma
GmbH
Medical Affairs
Alfred-Nobel-Strabe 10, 40789
Monheim am Rhein
Germany
Email: luis.moeckel@ucb.com
Received on: April 24, 2018, Accepted on: May 07, 2018, Published on: May 14, 2018
Citation: Luis Mockel, Laura Maria Schmidt, Kelly Nieten, Olaf Randerath (2018). Collaboration between GP and Pneumologist in the Management
of Patients with Chronic Respiratory Diseases: An Interview Study in Germany
Copyright: 2018 Luis Mockel, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
General practitioners (GPs) play a crucial role in the German healthcare system for the management of patients with chronic diseases and should strongly collaborate with pneumologists to manage patients with severe respiratory diseases.
To evaluate this working relationship, we asked 611 GPs to rate statements on their cooperation with pneumologists using the Net Promoter Score (NPS).
Our interviews revealed that in general 37.70% of GPs are satisfied with their collaboration with local pneumologists. A total of 55.92% of GPs agreed to continue a treatment recommended by the specialist, but only for 19.24% of GPs the pneumologists are giving therapeutic recommendations. Besides, German GPs showed a strong disagreement (88.37%) on case conferences by video chat, even though this channel could have a positive impact on waiting times at specialists and on the management of patients with chronic respiratory disease.
In conclusion, ~1/3 of interviewed German GPs mentioned satisfaction with their collaboration with local pneumologists. Potential for improvement of this collaboration could be in particular the willingness of pneumologists to provide therapeutic recommendations which GPs can follow by prescribing the recommended treatments.
Keywords: Respiratory disease, Pneumologists, Collaboration, Chronic disease, Patient management