| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立台北護理學院 === 醫護管理研究所 === 96 === Background: Veterans without employment enjoyed full subsidiary on National Health Insurance premiums and medical expenditure. They were also distinguishable for their demographic characteristics of aging. However, their use of outpatient, emergency and inpatient resources had not been comprehensively researched. This study sought to conduct a comparative analysis on the medical resources utilization between this particular group and the general public.
Object: To verify if the following facts between veterans without employment and the general public had any statistically significant difference: the number of visit and medical expenditure for outpatient and emergency services, the number of high-tech examination at inpatient, and the utilization of Psychiatry, both outpatient and inpatient.
Data source: The data were drawn from National Health Insurance Research
Database(NHIRD) for 2003.
Method: A study-control design was employed, matching the age and gender of both subjects. Applied multiple-regression-analysis on the difference of medical expenditure for outpatient and emergency services; Used multiple linear regression analysis on the difference of visits to outpatient and emergency services, and number of high-tech examination at inpatient. Applied logistic regression on the difference of utilization of Psychiatry, both outpatient and inpatient.
Result: Veterans without employment had significantly more visits to outpatient and emergency, higher medical expenditure per emergency visit and higher utilization on outpatient and inpatient Psychiatry.
Conclusion: Beside those with statistically significant difference, the medical expenditure for outpatient services was not statistically significant, probably because the comparison was based on the expenditure of each visit. As to the number of high-tech examination at inpatient, the different diagnosis from both subjects would lead to different examinations, which made the comparison unpractical.
Limitation: Owing to the use of secondary data, the study strived to regulate all the variables available, which could influence the utilization of medical resources. If the severity of diseases of any sample could not be identified, comorbidity index was used as the best estimate for it.
Key words: veterans, medical resources utilization,
National Health Insurance Research Database(NHIRD)
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