What is the Community Respiratory Service?

The Bristol Community Health Community Respiratory Service is made up of health care professionals who specialise in providing services for people with chronic respiratory diseases. These services include; preventing unnecessary admission to hospital, supporting early discharge from hospital, home oxygen assessment review and pulmonary rehabilitation. See below to find out more about each of these services.

What does the Community Respiratory Service offer?

Our admission avoidance and early supported discharge services are run by specialist respiratory clinicians who help prevent patients from having to attend hospital or remain in hospital for longer than needed. This service is for people who have a diagnosis of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). Our team of nurses and therapists will visit you at home during the length of your COPD exacerbation, and will work alongside other community teams such as the Rapid Response Team if necessary to enable you to remain at home or come home early from hospital. The care is aimed at encouraging patients to take control in managing their own condition.

For information about COPD, visit NHS Choices.

Our pulmonary rehabilitation service is a treatment programme for people with long term lung conditions, whose breathing is causing them difficulty when moving around or carrying out daily activities. The programme will combine a personalised activity plan with education and advice to help people with lung conditions feel more in control of their condition.

You can learn more about our pulmonary rehabilitation service through this video of James, one of our patients, who recently attended the course.

Our Home Oxygen Assessment and Review Service currently provides ongoing care to some patients who have home oxygen and live within Bristol. The patients are reviewed either in their own home or within a clinic environment close to their home. Personalised care planning around the management of oxygen is key to the service.

How can I access the Community Respiratory Service?

Admission avoidance and early supported discharge
These services are for people who live in Bristol (who have a Bristol GP, have a confirmed diagnosis of COPD and are suffering from an exacerbation (worsening) of their COPD. Patients should be at risk of hospital admission or have been admitted to hospital and require support at home to help them recover from the exacerbation

Access to our admission avoidance service is by referral only, which must be made by a health care professional who has reviewed the patient on the same day. The clinician must approve the patients as safe to be managed at home with the support of our team.

To refer to our admission avoidance service, contact our single point of access on 0117 903 0202.

Access to our early supported discharge service can be made by any clinical member of staff from University Hospitals of Bristol, and is for patients who are safe to be discharged early with support from the team in their own home. To refer, call our team on 0117 342 3895.

Both services are open seven days a week: Monday – Friday: 8am-8pm, Saturday, Sunday and Bank holidays: 9am-5pm.

Pulmonary Rehabilitation
Any healthcare professional can refer to the service using the referral form – to access this download the ‘Referral Pathway’ from the ‘Download Documents’ section on the left side of this page.

Patients who have a diagnosis of a long term lung condition can also self refer by contacting the Community Respiratory Team on the number below. Patients who self refer must be happy for our team to speak to their GP to gain their full medical history prior to attendance at the group.

Our programmes run on varying days and times between Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, at locations across the whole of Bristol. You can call the service on 0117 9617159.

Home Oxygen Review Service

We also run an oxygen administration service, which administers referrals to the home oxygen services within the University Hospitals of Bristol or North Bristol NHS Trust,. These referrals are for patients who require long term oxygen therapy. Any health care professional can refer to the service using the referral form – to access this, download the Oxygen Referral Form from the ‘Download Documents’ section on the left side of this page. Complete the form and email it to: [email protected]

Find out more about the team:

Click here to read more about our Community Respiratory Team.

Read a day in the life of Respiratory Physiotherapist Laura Turner, who leads our Community Respiratory team.

Where this service is located