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Quality of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease-Related Health Care in Rural and Urban Veterans Affairs Clinics

Only minor disparities were found between patients at rural and urban clinics in this examination of the differences in the quality of health care for patients with COPD.
Federal Practitioner. 2017 June;34(6):27-32
June 26, 2017|Federal Practitioner
Eric J. Swanson, DO;Kathryn L. Rice, MD;Thomas S. Rector, PhD;Anders D. Westanmo, PharmD;Peter G. Duane, MD
Author and Disclosure Information

Dr. Swanson is an allopathic physician, Dr. Rice and Dr. Duane are physicians, Dr. Rector is a core investigator, and Dr. Westanmo was a pharmacist at the time the article was written; all at Minneapolis VA Health Care System in Minnesota. Dr. Swanson, Dr. Rice, and Dr. Duane also have appointments at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

Author disclosures
The authors report no actual or potential conflicts of interest with regard to this article.

Disclaimer
The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of Federal Practitioner, Frontline Medical Communications Inc., the U.S. Government, or any of its agencies. This article may discuss unlabeled or investigational use of certain drugs. Please review the complete prescribing information for specific drugs or drug combinations—including indications, contraindications, warnings, and adverse effects—before administering pharmacologic therapy to patients.

Limitations

This study was performed retrospectively, increasing the potential of missing data, especially from outside the VA health care system. Patients were not randomly assigned to rural or urban clinics, so differences in patient characteristics could exist. Alcohol and addictive disorders were more common in urban patients, which might affect adherence to prescribed medications. In addition, lower rate of obstructive sleep apnea was found in the rural population, which has been linked to increased airway inflammation and COPD exacerbations resulting in hospitalization.32,33 Mortality was not assessed as all patients were alive and seen in clinic at time of enrollment.

The authors were not able to record a patients’ residence in a long-term care facility or institutionalization, use of home care, or palliative care services due to limitations in the EMR system. Whether patients received comanaged primary care or underwent pulmonary rehabilitation could not be obtained from the EMR. Most patients never had lung volumes or diffusion capacity and thus were not included. The authors could not report whether inhaler therapy was appropriate compared with the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lund Disease(GOLD)severity score because most of the spirometry was done at a discordant time to when inhaler therapy was assessed, and new GOLD guidelines include patient symptoms that were not reliably recorded in the EMR. Last, the authors had hoped to include smoking status and cessation practices as part of the quality measures, but due to significant variability in patients’ documented smoking status in the same period, the data were deemed unreliable.

Conclusion

No disparities were found between rural and urban clinics in the quality of health care for patients with COPD in the MVAHCS except that fewer rural patients had prior spirometry; a difference that is likely due to the fact that only recently has spirometry been implemented in the MVAHCS rural clinics. Overall the quality of COPD care was high and above the previously reported rates. Further larger studies of rural and urban quality of health care for patients with COPD are needed in other VA and non-VA systems to determine whether disparities exist and whether they are associated with clinical outcomes, including ED visits, hospitalizations, and mortality.

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