Treating Lung Disease: Bronchodilator Medicine
2023-24 Edition
Why is it important to treat Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease or COPD with bronchodilators?
When you have COPD, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, it is hard to breathe. COPD can get worse over time and prevent you from doing basic activities like walking, cooking, and other everyday tasks. That is why it is important to stop smoking and to get your COPD treated with medicine. If your breathing becomes more difficult, you may need to go to the emergency room or hospital.
How should doctors treat COPD?
There is no cure for COPD but it can be treated. It is important to work with your doctor to get the right treatment plan so that you can breathe easier and slow down the damage caused by the disease.
If you do go to the hospital or the emergency room, within one month your doctor should make sure you receive a bronchodilator to help your breathing. This medicine relaxes the muscles around the airways in the lungs to make it easier to breathe.
Talk with your doctor and health plan to find out about what other services are available. Many health plans offer additional support and resources for patients with COPD. These additional services may be educational materials (online and in print), classes or support groups, or phone counseling.
What do the stars mean?
The scores show how well each health plan did at making sure patients with COPD got the right medicine, called a bronchodilator, within 30 days after their breathing became more difficult and resulted in an emergency room visit or hospital stay. A higher score means more patients got the right care at the right time.
The scores are based on information from at least 30 health plan member administrative records in 2022.
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