Screening and Registering Patients with Asthma and Copd in Slovenian Primary Care: First Results

This study aimed to evaluate a new project of the Slovene Ministry of Health - the Family Medicine Model Practices (MPs) Project in Slovenia, and to show its effectiveness in the management of asthma and COPD by family medicine practice teams, consisting of a family physician, a nurse practitioner and a practice nurse.

A total of 107 family practices with 203122 patients joined the project during the first year of its initiation. The effectiveness of the program in disease management was analysed in two phases according to the registration of family practices. The number of patients registered and the number of asthma and COPD patients (existing and newly detected) by model practice teams were being reported. Descriptive analyses were used to describe the study populations. Prevalence by diseases and phases was established after the initial round of data collection. Chi square (χ(2)) test was used to analyse the difference between the phases.

The frequency of asthma was 2.12%, while the frequency of COPD was 1.15% throughout the study period. For both diseases, more than 30% of patients were newly diagnosed.

The project of implementing Family Medicine MPs in the area of COPD has given first positive results and the project is still ongoing to its full implementation.