Asthma

The Central Ohio Medical Directors Coalition (COMDC) is committed to assisting and supporting physicians in providing quality health care and to improving health in our community.  We recognize that asthma is a complex, multifactoral disease.  This letter serves to provide you with common clinical care guidelines as well as to inform you of proposed future activities.  These activities may include: 1) a data linkage project that would give you more information about your asthmatic patients; 2) support for certified asthma education; and, 3) the development of a broad based community asthma coalition.

Health plans may have shared different formats of asthma care recommendations and patient action plans with you.  Through the efforts of the COMDC, Central Ohio health plans have endorsed common treatment recommendations for asthma as delineated by NAEPP/NHLBI.  Enclosed are the common recommendations and multiple, wallet size Asthma Action Plans for your patients.  We urge you to consider the specific severity level of each of the asthmatics patients that you treat.  If they are in the persistent severity classification , for instance, they  (or the parent) should understand  the prescribed treatment and know to keep their action  plan  with them at all times.