OBJECTIVES:  Care fragmentation across various care sites involved in the treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) increases morbidity and mortality burden, and also incurs heavy utilization of acute health services. This poses a challenge of optimising care delivery unless effective interventions are implemented. This study aims to assess the effectiveness of the COPD Integrated Care Pathway (ICP) programme in coordinating care processes to improve clinical outcomes and enhance patient adherence to recommended care processes. METHODS:  A retrospective matched-groups design was conducted in this study. The intervention group comprised COPD patients aged 40 and above who enrolled in the ICP programme implemented by Alexandra Hospital from April 2012 to June 2013. A control group was identified among COPD patients in 3 regional clusters (Alexandra Hospital, Tan Tock Seng Hospital and National University Health System) using one-to-one propensity score matching (PSM) to adjust for the differences in baseline characteristics. Evaluation on compliance with recommended care and patient activation was conducted to assess enrollees’ patient adherence. COPD hospitalisation and hospital bed days of both groups were monitored over a 2-year follow-up period and statistical comparisons of their differences were performed using a generalized estimating equation approach. RESULTS:  The intervention cohort included 71 patients and an equal number of controls were identified from a sample of 5145 COPD patients. After applying PSM, 90% of their baseline characteristics were statistically balanced. The programme enrollees achieved 4.3 (out of 5) in self-empowerment with activation scores. Compared with non-enrollees, the COPD ICP enrollees had a significantly lower hospitalisation risk (p=0.001) and savings in total number of hospital bed days (p=0.029). CONCLUSIONS:  The results suggest that the COPD ICP programme was an effective intervention for enrollees to sustain improvements in compliance with all recommended care elements, incur lower hospitalisation risk and health care utilisation.