Reported numbers of patients with rare diseases based on ten-year longitudinal national disability registries in Taiwan.

This paper aims to describe a general demographic picture of patients with rare diseases in Taiwan and particularly focuses on the prevalence of rare diseases over time, age and gender distributions. We analyzed data mainly from the national disability registry from 2002 to 2011 in Taiwan, Republic of China. The results showed that the number of rare diseases increased from 93 to 193 between 2002 and 2011 and that the prevalence of rare diseases increased from 0.

Cost of hospitalization and length of stay in people with Down syndrome: evidence from a national hospital discharge claims database.

The present paper aims to describe the hospitalization profiles which include medical expenses and length of stays, and to determine their possible influencing factors of hospital admission on persons with Down syndrome in Taiwan. We employed a population-based, retrospective analyses used national health insurance hospital discharge data of the year 2005 in this study. Subject inclusion criteria included residents of Taiwan, and diagnosed with Down syndrome (ICD code is 758.

A retrospective population-based data analyses of inpatient care use and medical expenditure in people with intellectual disability co-occurring schizophrenia.

The paper aims to analyze the hospital inpatient care use and medical fee of people with ID co-occurring with schizophrenia in Taiwan. A nationwide data were collected concerning hospital admission and medical expenditure of people with ID (n = 2565) among national health insurance beneficiaries in Taiwan. Multiple regression analyses were undertaken to determine the role of the explanatory variables to hospital psychiatric inpatient care and medical expenditure.