The Association between Continuity of Care and All-Cause Mortality in Patients with Newly Diagnosed Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: A Population-Based Retrospective Cohort Study, 2005-2012

The disease burden is increasing for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) due to increasing of the growth rate of prevalence and mortality. But the empirical researches are a little for COPD that studied the association between continuity of care and death and about predictors effect on mortality. To investigate the association between continuity of care (COC) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) mortality and to identify other mortality-related factors in COPD patients. We conducted a longitudinal, population-based retrospective cohort study in adult patients with COPD from 2002 to 2012 using a nationwide health insurance claims database. The study sample included individuals aged 40 years and over who developed COPD in 2005 and survived until 2006. We performed a Cox proportional hazard regression analysis with COC analyzed as a time-dependent covariate. Of the 3,090 participants, 60.8% died before the end of study (N = 1,879). The median years of survival for individuals with high COC (COC index≥0.75) was 3.92, and that for patients with low COC (COC index