Primary care physicians (PCPs) play a substantial role in caring for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), with pulmonologists and cardiologists seeing far fewer COPD patients, a new study found. The population-based cross-sectional study included individuals aged ≥35 years with physician-diagnosed COPD. The primary outcomes were ambulatory visits to PCPs, pulmonologists, and all other specialists within a 1-year period. Researchers found:

• 895,155 individuals were identified as having physician-diagnosed COPD.
• Of these, 56,533 (6.3%) individuals had no ambulatory care visits, 802,327 (89.6%) saw PCPs, and 95,782 (10.7%) saw pulmonologists.
• By comparison, 736,496 (82.3%) saw other specialists, and 218,997 (24.5%) saw cardiologists.
• In a sub-cohort, ~30% of patients saw pulmonologists with 1 hospitalization and 43.7% in ≥2 hospitalizations compared to ~10% with no hospitalization.