Asthma Classification and Therapies

Why is this important?

Many people associate the treatment of asthma with inhalers.  Yet patients with persistent asthma should receive more intensive therapy than these inhalers can provide.  Such patients are at a higher risk for more severe asthma attacks, which can lead to missed work days or school days, visits to the emergency department, hospitalizations and even death.  Patients who receive a proper diagnosis of their asthma receive the most appropriate therapy for treating the illness.

How WellSpan Compares

Realizing that a simple diagnosis of asthma is not enough to determine the best treatment for patients, the physicians of the WellSpan Medical Group closely measure how consistently they document accurate asthma diagnoses and prescribe the correct medications.  The following shows the percentage of WellSpan Medical Group patients who have been diagnosed accurately and treated appropriately.

Unit of Measurement: Percentage

A higher score is better than a lower score.

What we are doing to improve our performance.

WellSpan Health has identified the treatment of asthma as a systemwide objective.  The doctors and nurses of the WellSpan Medical Group have made this objective one of their primary clinical interventions.  Recognizing the importance that this clinical intervention has in the lives of their patients, our primary care physicians have developed tools to help them classify asthma patients correctly.  Physicians have also increased their focus on providing the appropriate therapies for each classification of asthmatic patient.