Dudley Pneumococcal Pilot, increasing uptake and reducing health inequalities for COPD patients (2025)

The Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust

Project summary

The purpose of our project was to contact patients registered at a Dudley GP Practice with a diagnosis of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) to offer them a Pneumococcal Vaccine. Research has shown that patients who have COPD and have had the pneumococcal vaccination have fewer COPD exacerbations, hospital admissions and in some cases death. This was in conjunction with Liz Jones and Nadine Edinborough from the Health and Wellbeing dept at Dudley Council.
Due to their experience in having supportive conversations with patients, the Medicines Optimisation Support Hub (MOSH), which is part of the Primary Care Clinical Pharmacy team,  took on this task to help and support the GP surgeries offer this service to the vulnerable patients who may have otherwise missed out on the vaccine due to the surgery not having the time or staff availability to do it.
An EMIS search was created the Primary Care Clinical Pharmacy team which identified those patients who fall into the eligibility criteria but had not received the vaccination.  
Once all the patient data had been collated the MOSH officer contacted each patient over the phone to discuss the benefits of having the vaccination or to signpost them to a Pharmacist should they have any questions the MOSH officers could not answer.  
 Patients who agree to receiving the vaccination were then booked an appointment by the MOSH Officer via EMIS at their GP practice into the appropriate clinic or advised that the GP practice team will contact them directly to make the appointment (some surgeries preferred to book their own appointments). 
Many patients were not aware of what the vaccine was or that they were eligible for it. When questioned most people said they would not have had the vaccine if it wasn’t for MOSH calling to offer it. The project was favourably received by both patients and GP surgeries.
MOSH booked 223 vaccination appointments in surgeries and referred 282 patients to the roving vaccination team (these referrals were for housebound or care home patients.), 90 patients requested further information so their details were passed onto our Specialist Respiratory Pharmacist who then contacted them to answer any questions they had. Overall, 369 Pneumococcal vaccines were given to Vulnerable patients who may not have been given this opportunity if not for this scheme.
Potential hospital admissions avoidance can be calculated to be between £231,945 and £330,645.
Additionally one in eight acute hospital discharges then require step-down intermediate care at a cost of approximately £2000 per episode, delivering additional savings of £41,330. 
Return on investment is at least 154 to 1.