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71016 Defining "rurality": Rural-urban disparities among COPD patients in national VA data

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 March 2021

Arianne Baldomero
Affiliation:
Minneapolis VA Health Care System University of Minnesota
Ken M. Kunisaki
Affiliation:
Minneapolis VA Health Care System University of Minnesota
Patrick Hammett
Affiliation:
Minneapolis VA Health Care System
David Nelson
Affiliation:
Minneapolis VA Health Care System
Carrie Henning-Smith
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
Ann Bangerter
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
Chris H. Wendt
Affiliation:
Minneapolis VA Health Care System
R. Adams Dudley
Affiliation:
Minneapolis VA Health Care System
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Abstract

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ABSTRACT IMPACT: Our research focuses on determining rural-urban disparities in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) management to improve COPD health outcomes in rural areas. OBJECTIVES/GOALS: Several methods exist to distinguish rural from urban areas, but it is not clear which method relates most directly to rural-urban health care disparities. To address this, we compared different measures of rurality to measures of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) processes of care among a national sample of veterans. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: Retrospective analysis of patients with COPD (2016-2019 by ICD-10 codes) using national Veterans Affairs (VA) data. We assessed rurality by: 1) patient’s residential address, 2) assigned primary care clinic address, and 3) drive time from the patient’s residence to closest primary care clinic. Rurality designations of the residential address and primary care clinic address into urban, rural, and highly rural areas are based on the Rural Urban Commuting Area (RUCA) codes. The dependent variables were binary outcomes of: 1) documentation of a pulmonary clinic encounter and 2) evidence of spirometry to confirm the diagnosis of COPD. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: Of 6,765,951 veterans, 1,157,002 (17%) had COPD (Table 1). Although approximately 40% of patients with COPD reside in addresses that are rural and highly rural, a large majority are assigned to primary care clinics in urban areas (82.8%) and reside within 30 minutes to the closest primary care clinic (76.7%) (Table 2). Compared to defining rurality based on patient’s residential address or drive time to closest primary care, defining rurality based on the assigned primary care clinic address was associated with a larger disparity in rates of pulmonary encounter. In contrast, the drive time from the patient’s residence to the closest primary care was the strongest predictor of receipt of spirometry (Figure 1 and Table 3). DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF FINDINGS: Estimates of the severity of rural-urban disparities varied based on the definition of rurality used. For two process measures, definitions of rurality based on where the patient received primary care generated more evidence of disparities than definitions based solely on the patient’s residential address.

Type
Translational Science, Policy, & Health Outcomes Science
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Association for Clinical and Translational Science 2021