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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Medical cost for disability
— a longitudinal observation of National Health Insurance beneficiaries in Japan | | Author(s) | Ichiro Tsuji, Aya Kuwahara, Yoshikazu Nishino |
| Journal title | Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, vol 47, no 4, April 1999 |
| Pages | pp 470-476 |
| Keywords | Physical disabilities ; Medical care ; Costs [care] ; Health insurance ; Longitudinal surveys ; Japan. |
| Annotation | Participants were 49,364 beneficiaries of National Health Insurance (NHI) in Japan, aged 40 to 79, and living in the catchment area of Ohsaki Public Health Centre, Miyagi. Subjects were mainly farmers, self-employed people, housewives or pensioners. Measurements were collected from January to December 1995 from NHI Claim History files on medical care use (number of outpatient visits and days in in-patient care) and the costs for each subject. The relationship between physical functioning levels and medical costs was analysed. The medical costs per capita increased with poorer physical function. Medical costs for those with self-care limitations increased by 4 times in men and 3 times in women, compared with those with no physical limitation. In this cohort, the 4.3% of the those who were dependent in self-care used 15% of the total in-patient days and 10% of total medical costs. Treatment of patients with disability requires a large amount of medical resources. There is an urgent need for cost-effective intervention programmes for disability prevention, which could be offset against the cost for treating the disabled. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-990825300 A |
| Classmark | BN: LK: QDC: WPG: 3J: 7DT |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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