UCHealth’s University of Colorado Hospital (UCH) opens its new multidisciplinary program—the Center for Lungs and Breathing, designed to provide expert, integrated patient care.

The center organizes its team of experts in seven categories:

  • lung transplantation
  • lung cancer and head and neck cancer
  • advanced lung diseases including pulmonary fibrosis and COPD
  • pulmonary vascular disease including pulmonary hypertension and pulmonary embolism
  • complex airway conditions
  • sleep disorders
  • allergy, asthma and inflammatory diseases

The Center for Lungs and Breathing is designed to provide an excellent patient experience. Will Cook, president and CEO of UCH, says the center aims to see patients within one week after their initial call. Their goal is to provide better service to both patients and their referring doctors. “Our patients will have peace of mind knowing a team of experts is working together to effectively treat their condition,” Cook says in a release. “The Center for Lungs and Breathing will always put patients first, making tests and appointments as convenient as possible and offering the most advanced treatments and clinical trials.”

The center will include a central access center and phone number, with a nurse navigator transferring calls to the appropriate specialist. Navigators in the appropriate specialty will then guide patients through the process of setting up single-day rounds of tests and appointments with various doctors likely to be involved in their care.

Through the center, UCH is expanding its expertise in allergy and asthma treatment; ear, nose and throat conditions; sleep medicine and interventional pulmonology.

Todd Bull, MD, a pulmonary and critical-care specialist who serves as interim medical director for the center, says the center is “a new organizational approach to areas of medicine in which we have historically had exceptional expertise. Treating lung and upper airway disease has been a strength of ours for decades.”

He says, “We’ll be able to care for patients from early stages of lung and airway disease all the way through lung transplant. With nationally-renowned specialists and researchers, the Center for Lungs and Breathing will be able to provide the very best and most comprehensive care for patients throughout the Rocky Mountain Region.”