Effective prevention in clinical practice may save human capital loss: Real-world evidence from Taiwan's National Health Insurance.

Background/purpose: Effective prevention could protect the health of the workforce, save human capital loss, and maintain employee productivity as well as economic growth.

Methods: Using real-world data of patients with end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) and lung cancer, we multiplied their lifetime survival functions with employment ratios and working salaries to estimate the lifetime employment durations and earnings. They were compared with corresponding age-, sex-, and calendar year-matched referents to assess the differences in loss of lifetime employment duration and earnings.

Losses of lifetime employment duration and productivity for patients with different subtypes and stages of lung cancer.

Background: How different subtypes and stages of lung cancer affect morbidity- and mortality-associated productivity have not been investigated. This study quantified the losses of lifetime employment duration and productivity among patients with various subtypes and stages of lung cancer.

Methods: We identified nationwide lung cancer patients diagnosed at the ages of 50-64 between 2011 and 2019.

Losses of Life Expectancy and Productivity Associated with COVID-19 Pandemic in Canada: Policy Implication for Future Communicable Disease Control.

This research examines whether the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) did harm to the population's health through comparing the changes in the life expectancy of Canadians with those of Australians over the period from March 2019 to February 2021 by using a difference-in-differences (DID) estimation method. We found that the pandemic did cause differences in life expectancies between Canada and Australia, probably because of different initial control policies for COVID-19. This study uses the indicator of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) to measure the societal health burden, which was corroborated by estimating temporal productivity loss (TPL) and permanent productivity loss (PPL) based on the human capital approach (HCA) using data from Health Canada.

Estimating US Earnings Loss Associated with COVID-19 Based on Human Capital Calculation.

Infection with COVID-19 could result in lockdown, quarantine of contacts, absenteeism from work, and temporary productivity loss. This research aims to calculate (1) how the pandemic affects on-the-job probability and earnings for the working population, and (2) how much productivity loss is associated with self or a family member sick with COVID-19. Based on data collected from the U.

The Determinants of Telehealth Provision: Empirical Evidence from OECD Countries.

Health services provided through the telecommunications system aim to improve the population's health and well-being. This research aims to explore what digital, economic, and health factors are associated with the provision of telehealth services, especially in ageing communities. Applying Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries' experiences, this research tries to construct a logistic regression model between adopting a telehealth system or not, a binary outcome variable, and a group of potentially explanatory variables.

Investing preventive care and economic development in ageing societies: empirical evidences from OECD countries.

Background: The proportion of the elderly aged 65 years old or above will reach 16% in 2050 worldwide. Early investment in effective prevention would generally reduce the morbidity, complication, functional disability, and mortality of most chronic illnesses and save resources in both healthcare and social services. This research aims to investigate how the optimal allocation of medical resources between prevention and treatment adds value to the population's health as well as examine the interaction between ageing, health, and economic performance.

Estimated Loss of Lifetime Employment Duration for Patients Undergoing Maintenance Dialysis in Taiwan.

Background And Objectives: An accurate estimate of the loss of lifetime employment duration resulting from kidney failure can facilitate comprehensive evaluation of societal financial burdens.

Design, Setting, Participants, & Measurements: All patients undergoing incident dialysis in Taiwan during 2000-2017 were identified using the National Health Insurance Research Database. The corresponding age-, sex-, and calendar year-matched general population served as the referents.

The association between economic indicators and the incidence of tetraplegia from traumatic spinal cord injury in Taiwan.

Background: Economic performance may affect public health parameters. This study aimed to determine the time trend of incidence of traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) and its association with income, presented by GDP (gross domestic product) per capita.

Methods: This study was a retrospective observational study in Taiwan.

Savings of loss-of-life expectancy and lifetime medical costs from prevention of spinal cord injuries: analysis of nationwide data followed for 17 years.

Background: The objectives of this research were to determine the savings of loss-of-life expectancy (LE) and lifetime medical costs (LMC) from prevention of spinal cord injuries (SCI) in Taiwan.

Methods: From the claims database of Taiwan National Health Insurance, we identified 6164 adult patients with newly diagnosed SCI with permanent functional disability from 2000 to 2015 and followed them until the end of 2016. We estimated survival function through the Kaplan-Meier method and extrapolated it to lifetime.

Mapping Regional Well-Being in the Universal Health Coverage System in Taiwan.

Purpose: Regarding the universal health coverage (UHC) goal of eliminating health disparity, this study seeks to examine whether this objective has actually been achieved and whether residence affects health and well-being inequality.

Methods: Based on Taiwan's experience with its UHC system, this research quantifies health and well-being indicators, including quality-adjusted life expectancy (QALE), consumption, and utility-adjusted life expectancy (UALE), and uses the geographic information system (GIS) to map regional well-being throughout Taiwan. Using spatial lag regressions, this study estimates how residence and socio-economic factors affect population's well-being.

The roles of preventive and curative health care in economic development.

Introduction: Both the preventive and curative healthcare provisions accumulate agents' health stock and stimulate economies' productivities. However, with limited medical resources, increases in preventive health expenditure crowd out curative expenditure, and vice versa, which in turn impairs the population's health and deters economic growth. This research aims to provide a empirically rigorous test on the hypothesis that optimally allocating health expenditure between prevention and cures stimulates economic growth within different countries, especially developed countries, and investigates whether health services are luxury goods on the path of economic development.

Universal health insurance, health inequality and oral cancer in Taiwan.

Introduction: The introduction of universal health insurance coverage aims to provide equal accessibility and affordability of health care, but whether such a policy eliminates health inequalities has not been conclusively determined. This research aims to examine the healthcare outcomes of oral cancer and determine whether the universal coverage system in Taiwan has reduced health inequality.

Methods: Linking the databases of the National Cancer Registry with the National Mortality Registry in Taiwan, we stratified patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma by gender and income to estimate the incidence rate, cumulative incidence rate aged from 20 to 79 (CIR20-79), life expectancy, and expected years of life lost (EYLL).

Continuing Medical Education via Telemedicine and Sustainable Improvements to Health.

Background. This research aims to investigate the quantitative relationship between telemedicine and online continuing medical education (CME) and to find the optimal CME lectures to be delivered via telemedicine to improve the population's health status. Objective.

Health expenditures spent for prevention, economic performance, and social welfare.

Background: Countries with limited resources in economic downturns often reduce government expenditures, of which spending on preventive healthcare with no apparent immediate health impact might be cut down first. This research aims to find the optimum share of preventive health expenditure to gross domestic product (GDP) and investigate the implications of preventive health services on economic performance and the population's wellbeing.

Methods: We develop the economic growth model to undertake health-economic analyses and parameterize for Taiwan setting.

More Health Expenditure, Better Economic Performance? Empirical Evidence From OECD Countries.

Recent economic downturns have led many countries to reduce health spending dramatically, with the World Health Organization raising concerns over the effects of this, in particular among the poor and vulnerable. With the provision of appropriate health care, the population of a country could have better health, thus strengthening the nation's human capital, which could contribute to economic growth through improved productivity. How much should countries spend on health care? This study aims to estimate the optimal health care expenditure in a growing economy.

Measuring adjusted quality of life in telemedicine.

Objective: This research uses the quality-adjusted life expectancy (QALE) method to assess the QALE changes of rural residents before and after introducing telemedicine health services.

Materials And Methods: Based on Taiwan's experiences of telemedicine provision over the period 1995-2004, this representative of a national sample is composed of 85 cases for people living in Penghu County, a remote area in Taiwan. Cases were evaluated using persons with life expectancy at birth from 85 to 0 years.

Economic evaluations of the effects of longevity on telemedicine and conventional healthcare provision.

Objective: Providing healthcare for the elderly is one of the expectations of a telemedicine system to reduce the isolation of the aging and enhance the quality of long-term care for the elderly. Based on the experiences in Taiwan, this research aimed at investigating the influences of longevity on the demand for health services through telecommunications and conventional face-to-face methods and to note the relationship between telemedicine and conventional health services.

Materials And Methods: Multiple regression analysis was undertaken.

The role of cost in telemedicine evaluation.

This study examined how health service provision via telemedicine and conventional medical systems affected a population's health status and whether the costs of health services play a deterministic role in allocating medical resources. Using the health indicator of the life expectancy at birth and applying the generalized methods of moments estimators in version 10.0 of the statistical software STATA by blending statistics and data with the survey data, the panel datasets of observations were covered over the period 1995-2004 for the Taiwan experience.

The influence of economic performance on telemedicine provision.

Based on the experiences of Taiwan, this study aims to examine how country-level economic performance affects the provision of healthcare through telecommunications systems and how these health services influence individual-level health status. Regression analysis is undertaken and an ordinary least-squares method is applied. A panel dataset consists of a national sample over the period from 1995 to 2004.