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- Title
A positive legacy of trauma? A study on the impact of natural disasters on medical utilization.
- Authors
Iqbal, Usman; Li, Yu-Chuan Jack; Tang, Kung-pei; Chien, Hui-Chen; Yang, Ya-Ting; Hsu, Yi-Hsin Elsa
- Abstract
<bold>Objective: </bold>The impact of natural disasters on medical utilization is largely unknown and often overlooked how it affects bereaving and non-bereaving survivors. The aim of this study is to determine the medical utilization between both survivor groups and long-term effects.<bold>Study Design: </bold>A 10-year 1999-2009 population-based retrospective study by using the National Health Insurance claim database and the Household Registration database from the Department of Health, Executive Yuan, Taiwan.<bold>Settings: </bold>Taiwan 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake-affected areas.<bold>Participants: </bold>A total of 49 834 individuals which included 1183 bereaving survivors and 48 651 non-bereaving earthquake survivors.<bold>Intervention(s): </bold>None.<bold>Main Outcome Measures: </bold>Medical utilization of bereaving and non-bereaving survivors.<bold>Results: </bold>The results showed that bereaving survivors had significantly more outpatient visits before the earthquake, within 3-month period and 1 year after earthquake (odds ratio (OR) = 1.11, 1.16 and 1.08). However, after 1 year after earthquake their outpatient visits were not significantly different from non-bereaving, and even significantly less in some years. Inpatient visits of bereaving survivors had similar trend to outpatient visits, i.e. visits were more both before earthquake and within 3-month period after earthquake (OR = 1.59 and 1.89), however, they were not significantly higher than non-bereaving survivors for the following years of the study.<bold>Conclusion: </bold>Our study reveals that compared to non-bereaving survivors, bereaving survivors slightly had higher medical utilization in the beginning stage of earthquake, i.e. for the first 3-month period or 1 year after earthquake. However, there were no differences between these two groups in medical utilization including outpatient and inpatient visits in long run.
- Subjects
TAIWAN; NATURAL disasters; HEALTH insurance claims; NATIONAL health insurance
- Publication
International Journal for Quality in Health Care, 2019, Vol 31, Issue 1, p64
- ISSN
1353-4505
- Publication type
journal article
- DOI
10.1093/intqhc/mzy130