Limitations

  • While pharmacy claims demonstrate that a prescription was filled, whether patients actually took the medication as prescribed or used appropriate inhaler technique is unknown.
  • A diagnosis code on a medical claim is not positive proof of disease but may have been incorrectly coded or included as rule-out criteria. However, we required ≥2 diagnosis codes for COPD plus ≥1 claim for a long-acting bronchodilator-containing regimen to strengthen the patient selection process.
  • The results of this study are based on a population of MAPD enrollees and may not be generalizable to patients with COPD who have other forms of insurance or are uninsured.
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