Get Some Good Press for Pulmonary Rehabilitation Next Week

March 6, 2014

Pulmonary Rehabilitation Week kicks off on Sunday and runs through the 15th, and there’s never been a better time to get some media coverage for these life enhancing programs. 

With COPD set to join heart failure, heart attack, and pneumonia in the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program in October, your local press will have more incentive than ever before to run articles and TV news segments explaining how pulmonary rehab programs work to keep patients as healthy as possible – and hospitals from losing much needed reimbursement.

Our Local Public Relations is Effective Public Relations: A PR Guidebook for Respiratory Therapists and our online Media Guide have all the tools you need to get started. So get on the phone today and invite reporters to come out to your programs next week and see what they’re all about.

Of course, there are many other ways you can mark Pulmonary Rehabilitation Week as well, not the least of which is by increasing your own knowledge to better serve the patients in your programs. The AARC has lots of great resources for that too:

• COPD Educator Course: This complete tutorial on how to care for patients with the most common condition found in PR offers 10.0 CRCEs.
• Emerging Roles for the Respiratory Therapist in Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency: This online course covers the hereditary form of COPD and carries 3.0 CRCEs.
• Clinical Practice Guideline on Pulmonary Rehabilitation: The key components of a state-of-the-art PR program are outlined here.
• Position Statement on Pulmonary Rehabilitation: With a short and to-the-point overview of what a PR program should entail, this statement can be invaluable when developing a new program or upgrading an existing one.
• Pulmonary Rehabilitation Program Toolkit: Developed in response to ongoing problems with Medicare reimbursement under the PR benefit, this resource provides the guidance you need to accurately report your charges to Medicare.

We can keep you connected to your colleagues in PR as well. Our Continuing Care/Rehabilitation Section gives you the chance to network with your peers from across the country via a dedicated discussion list on AARConnect, and the section also supports a quarterly Bulletin with articles written especially for section members, plus a monthly email newsletter with the latest scientific evidence supporting PR and the patients you serve.

All of these resources combine to provide you with the comprehensive knowledge you need when it comes to PR, whether you’ve been running a program for years or are just now beginning to set one up to address COPD readmissions in your facility.