COPD: Disease Management Program is largely consistent with guidelines

DMPs are revised regularly

After being commissioned by the Federal Joint Committee (G-BA), IQWiG systematically searched for new guidelines, assessed their methodological quality, and extracted relevant recommendations from these guidelines. In a next step these recommendations were compared with the specifications for the German DMP.

A need for revision may arise if new studies provide new evidence on a disease and its treatment. It is therefore legally specified that a DMP must be revised at regular intervals. It is the Institute's responsibility to firstly identify differences between the guideline recommendations and the DMP. It is then the G-BA's responsibility to examine whether these differences should actually lead to a revision of the DMP.

13 relevant guidelines identified

IQWiG was able to include a total of 13 guidelines in its investigation. Four of these guidelines comprehensively address the care of patients with COPD. The others address specific aspects such as smoking cessation or refer to subgroups such as patients with alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, a congenital metabolic disorder.

Only few discrepancies

As IQWiG determined, the recommendations of the current guidelines are largely consistent with the requirements of the DMP; only few discrepancies were found. However, compared with the wording in the DMP directive, most recommendations are more detailed. For instance, the DMP directive states that patients should have access to a structured training program. Several guidelines go one step further and also provide recommendations on what specific content should be conveyed in these programs.