Do Primary Care Physicians Lose Contact with Their Colorectal Cancer Patients?

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Figure 1.
Proportion of colorectal cancer patients with a primary care visit over the observation period. // indicates that the beginning of observation year 1 lags by 7 months from the end of the baseline year. We excluded this treatment phase because we expected primary care visits to be superseded by frequent cancer-related care during this time.
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Figure 2.
Mean annual primary care visits per patient among colorectal cancer patients over the observation period. // indicates that the beginning of observation year 1 lags by 7 months from the end of the baseline year. We excluded this treatment phase because we expected primary care visits to be superseded by frequent cancer-related care during this time.

Table 1.

Number of Persons in Each Study Observation Year by Study Group

Table 2.

Characteristics of the Study Population at Baseline

Characteristics	Patients with CRC (%)
Characteristics	Stage 0–1(n = 8865)	Stage 2–3(n = 13,296)
Age (years)
65–69	21.4	19.0
70–74	29.0	28.2
75–79	27.1	26.6
80–89	22.5	26.2
Sex
Female	53.9	56.6
Race/ethnicity
White	86.6	87.2
African American	6.3	6.1
Hispanic	1.0	1.1
Asian	3.5	3.3
Other	2.6	2.3
NCI comorbidity index score
<0.0	76.8	79.0
0.0–0.5	13.2	12.0
0.5–1.0	6.2	5.8
>1.0	3.8	3.1
Reason for Medicare eligibility
Renal disease/disability	5.9	5.3
Age ≥65 years	94.1	94.7
Median household income in residence ZIP code^*
≤$30,000	8.2	8.6
$30,001–$45,000	38.4	39.0
>$45,000	53.4	52.4

↵* Median household income in residence ZIP code statistics have missing values: stage 0–1, 210; stage 2–3, 301.
NCI, National Cancer Institute; CRC, colorectal cancer.