31 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Background: The majority of previous studies investigating the health care utilization of people with dementia were conducted in Western societies. There is little information on the economic burden on the healthcare system attributable to dementia in Asian countries. This study thus investigated differences in utilization of healthcare services between subjects with and those without a diagnosis of dementia using Taiwan's National Health Insurance population-based database. Methods: This study comprised 5,666 subjects with a dementia diagnosis and 5,666 age- and gender-matched comparison subjects without a dementia diagnosis. We individually followed each subject for a 1-year period starting from their index date to evaluate their healthcare resource utilization. Healthcare resource utilization included the number of outpatient visits and inpatient days, and the mean costs of outpatient and inpatient treatments. In addition, we divided healthcare resource utilization into psychiatric and non-psychiatric services. Results: As for utilization of psychiatric services, subjects with a dementia diagnosis had significantly more outpatient visits (2.2 vs. 0.3, p

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere105789
JournalPLoS One
Volume9
Issue number8
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Aug 26 2014

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Agricultural and Biological Sciences(all)
  • Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology(all)
  • Medicine(all)

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