Posters

Burden of cataract surgery in Taiwan: a population-based retrospective cohort study

Poster Details

First Author: J.Lee TAIWAN

Co Author(s):    C. Chung   L. See                 

Abstract Details

Purpose:

To investigate secular trends of economic burden of cataract surgery in a compulsory single-payer National Health Insurance (NHI) system.

Setting:

Longitudinal Health Insurance Databases (LHID) of NHI system were analyzed in the Department of Public Health, Chang Gung University, Taiwan.

Methods:

LHID with approximately 3 million people in Taiwan NHI Program from 2000, 2005, and 2010 was used. Index year was defined as year 2000 for LHID2000, year 2005 for LHID2005, and year 2010 for LHID2010. Direct age standardization using the new World Health Organization Standard Population was employed to compare of the surgery incidence rates among the three years. Multiple linear regression was made to compare the fee of cataract surgery among the three years.

Results:

The amount of cataract surgery per million population in Taiwan was 4,685 in 2000, 5,522 in 2005, and increased to 6,665 in 2010. After age standardization and age-adjusted by Poisson regression, there was no yearly difference in the incidence rate. Cataract surgery volume was maintained stable by tightening the NHI expenditure. The mean fee (NT$) of cataract surgery was 23,196 in 2000, decreased to 20,631 in 2005 and 20,682 in 2010. Besides, about twice volume of difference between busy and slack months of cataract surgery was similarly noted in the 3 index years due to some religious or superstitious reasons.

Conclusions:

Contrary to many other countries, age adjusted and standardized incidence of cataract surgery in Taiwan kept stable over year 2000 to 2010. Despite of its elective nature of procedure, the schedule of cataract surgery was not even within a whole year, also causing a burden in manpower arrangement.

Financial Disclosure:

None