Fig. 3.

Acute medication use: all eligible patients by length of gap in care (N = 42,553).^a med medication, OCS oral corticosteroid. ^aNot all percentages sum to 100% as a result of rounding. ^b“Patients with evidence of disease exacerbation” are patients with asthma who filled prescriptions for OCS or patients with COPD who filled prescriptions for OCS and/or antibiotics. These patients were not included in the group of patients who filled only rescue inhalers because filling a rescue inhaler is not direct evidence of an exacerbation. ^c“All acute med class” includes any of the acute medications shown: antibiotics, rescue inhalers, or OCS. Specific medications included are shown in Table S4 in the electronic supplementary material