Association of Patient and Primary Care Provider Factors with Outpatient COPD Care Quality

Large gaps exist between guideline-recommended outpatient chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) care and clinical practice. Seeking to design effective interventions, we identified patient and primary care provider (PCP) characteristics associated with receiving evidence-based COPD care.

We performed an observational study of adults aged ≥ 40 years with clinically diagnosed COPD who received care at 2 University of Washington-affiliated primary care clinics between June 1, 2011, and June 1, 2013. Our primary outcome was the proportion of evidence-based outpatient COPD quality measures received through primary or pulmonary care. Among all patients, we assessed spirometry completion, respiratory symptom identification, smoking status ascertainment, oxygen saturation measurement, and guideline-concordant inhaled therapy prescription. We also determined confirmation of airflow obstruction, oxygen prescription, smoking cessation intervention, and pulmonary rehabilitation referral if eligible. We used multivariable mixed effects linear regression to estimate the association of patient and PCP characteristics with the primary outcome.

Among 641 patients, 382 were male (59.6%) with mean age 63.6 (standard deviation [SD] 10.6) years. Most patients currently smoked (N=386, 60.2%). Patients saw 150 unique PCPs during 5.3 (SD 3.2) PCP visits, with 107 completing pulmonary referrals (16.7%). Patients received 67.5% (SD 18.4%) of eligible (median 7 [interquartile range 6-7]) evidence-based quality measures. After adjustment, pulmonary referral was associated with a higher receipt of outpatient quality measures (ß₁17.7%, 95% confidence interval: 12.6%, 22.7%). Patient demographics, comorbidities, and PCP identity/characteristics were not associated with outpatient care quality.

The quality of outpatient COPD care was suboptimal. Future studies should investigate if engaging pulmonologists in COPD management improves care quality.