TY - JOUR T1 - Obstructive sleep apnoea hypopnoea syndrome (OSAHS) service improvement through streamlining of pathway and upskilling of respiratory physiologists JF - ERJ Open Research JO - erjor DO - 10.1183/23120541.sleepandbreathing-2021.8 VL - 7 IS - suppl 7 SP - 8 AU - M Bailey AU - A White AU - B Gray Y1 - 2021/04/16 UR - http://openres.ersjournals.com/content/7/suppl_7/8.abstract N2 - OSAHS is thought to affect around 1.8 million people in the UK. Due to the rising incidence of obesity, the number of referrals for suspected OSAHS has been steadily growing. Within our service, the average number of referrals have increased from 70 per month in December 2017 to 130 a month in December 2019 for a population size of 633,000 people. The service was inefficient and led to prolonged waiting times.To improve our service several changes were made: -Stricter vetting criteria-Discharging mild OSAHS patients with mild sleepiness-Physiologists to vet sleep referrals-Patients to 'choose and book' their own sleep study appointment-Physiologist to take over reporting sleep studies and directing the patient’s pathway-Stopped sending out sleep study reports to GPs prior to clinic-Increasing the number of sleep clinics-Stopping the 'one-stop-shop' of sleep clinic followed by starting continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP)-Training senior physiologists to run sleep clinics-Dedicated sleep multidisciplinary team meetings-Dedicated sleep coordinator-Use of digital technologies to store data, streamline pathway and automate tedious and repetitive task (further discussed in another abstract to the Sleep and Breathing 2021 conference)We undertook a retrospective study comparing data from before implementing the above changes (Sept 2017-Feb 2018) to after (Sept 2019-Feb 2020). The average wait from referral to CPAP treatment for the 2017-18 study period was 260 days, with a 49% breach rate over 1 year. This significantly dropped to 104 days with a 10% breach rate in the 2019-20 period. Hence a reduction of 79% was seen for breach rates.FootnotesCite this article as ERJ Open Research 2021; 7: Suppl. 7, 8.This is an ERS Lung Science Conference abstract. No full-text version is available. Further material to accompany this abstract may be available at www.ers-education.org (ERS member access only). ER -