Assessment of Medical Expenditures for Sepsis:Differentiating between Cases with and without Ruled-out Diagnoses

Setting public health priorities requires precise estimation of the burden of disease, including disease-specific medical expenditure. Information on multiple and ruled-out diagnoses on health insurance claims (HICs) has been ignored in traditional analyses of disease-specific medical expenditures in Japan. This study reviewed 448 inpatients with at least one diagnosis of sepsis on their HICs, who were insured by corporate health insurance organizations making claims on services provided from April 2006 to March 2007 in Japan. Subjects in whom sepsis-related diagnoses were specified as “ruled-out” were compared with subjects in whom sepsis-related diagnoses were classified as “not-ruled-out” (i.e., subjects in whom sepsis was considered possibly or likely present). Direct medical expenditure, length of stay (LOS), cost per day, cost of antibiotics, and proportion of administered cephalosporin and carbapenems were significantly higher in subjects classified as not-rule-out. When using health insurance claims in Japan, the statistics of medical expenditures and LOS are influenced by procedures performed to rule out a diagnosis, as well as those performed to treat a confirmed diagnosis of sepsis

Urbanization and physician maldistribution: a longitudinal study in Japan

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The relative shortage of physicians in Japan's rural areas is an important issue in health policy. In the 1970s, the Japanese government began a policy to increase the number of medical students and to achieve a better distribution of physicians. Beginning in 1985, however, admissions to medical school were reduced to prevent a future oversupply of physicians. In 2007, medical school entrants equaled just 92% of their 1982 peers. The urban annual population growth rate is positive and the rural is negative, a trend that may affect denominator populations and physician distribution.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Our data cover six time points and span a decade: 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, and 2008. The spatial units for analysis are the secondary tier of medical care (STM) as defined by the Medical Service Law and related legislation. We examined trends in the geographic disparities in population and physician distribution among 348 STMs in Japan. We compared populations and the number of physicians per 100,000 populations in each STM. To measure maldistribution quantitatively, we calculated Gini coefficients for physician distribution.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Between 1998 and 2008, the total population and the number of practicing physicians for every 100,000 people increased by 0.95% and 13.6%, respectively. However, the inequality of physician distribution remained constant, although small and mostly rural areas experienced an increase in physician to population ratios. In contrast, as the maldistribution of population escalated during the same period, the Gini coefficient of population rose. Although the absolute number of practicing physicians in small STMs decreased, the fall in the denominator population of the STMs resulted in an increase in the number of practicing physicians per population in those located in rural areas.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>A policy that increased the number of physicians and the physician to population ratios between 1998 and 2008 in all geographic areas of Japan, irrespective of size, did not lead to a more equal geographical distribution of physicians. The ratios of physicians to population in small rural STMs increased because of concurrent trends in urbanization and not because of a rise in the number of practicing physicians.</p

Inverse Correlation between Adiponectin and the Risk of Metabolic Syndrome in Middle-aged Japanese Male Workers

Despite a close association between adiponectin and both hypertension and type 2 diabetes, the relationship between adiponectin and metabolic syndrome has not yet been well-investigated. To examine and evaluate the association between serum adiponectin levels and metabolic syndrome based on Japanese diagnostic criteria, we analyzed adiponectin and anthropometric parameters in 869 male employees aged 40-59 who belonged to a health insurance society in Fukuoka Prefecture and who underwent annual health check-ups from August 2006 to July 2007. Two hundred and thirty-two of the 869 subjects (26.7%) were diagnosed with metabolic syndrome. The serum adiponectin levels were significantly higher in the non-metabolic syndrome group. In a multiple logistic regression analysis, the subjects in the top quartile of serum adiponectin (adjusted odds ratio:0.36;95% confidence interval:0.21-0.63) and the second (adjusted odds ratio:0.51;95% confidence interval:0.31-0.84) quartile had a significantly decreased risk for metabolic syndrome in comparison to the bottom quartile. The dose-response relationship between serum adiponectin levels and metabolic syndrome was significant (p for trend 0.0001) after adjusting for age, body mass index, smoking status, and drinking status. The current findings suggest that hypoadiponectinemia is inversely correlated with the risk of metabolic syndrome in middle-aged Japanese male workers.</p

Effects of the increase in co-payments from 20 to 30 percent on the compliance rate of patients with hypertension or diabetes mellitus in the Employed Health Insurance System

Objectives: How to contain medical expenditures is a universal problem. The Japanese government has increased patient co-payments to control it. The purpose of this study is to clarify whether the increase in co-payments to 30 percent prevented patients with hypertension or diabetes mellitus from receiving necessary care in the Employee Health Insurance System. Methods: The subjects were 211 patients with hypertension and 66 patients with diabetes mellitus who regularly visited physicians from October 2001 to March 2002 and were defined as a cohort that needed health care, and their medical indicators were examined between April and September 2002 (prestage) and between April and September 2003 (poststage). Results: In the hypertensive patients with no complications, the compliance rate was 89.9 percent and 88.0 percent in the prestage, and poststage, respectively, showing no significant change. In the hypertensive patients with complications, the compliance rate was 90.5 percent and 92.1 percent in the prestage and poststage, respectively, showing no significant change. In the diabetic patients with complications, the compliance rate was 77.5 percent and 79.2 percent, in the prestage and poststage, respectively, with no significant change. In the diabetic patients with no complications, however, the compliance rate was 83.7 percent and 66.7 percent, in the prestage and poststage, respectively. A significant decrease was observed among diabetic patients without complications. Conclusions: Increasing co-payments reduced necessary preventive care in diabetic patients without complications.</p

The Prevalence and Characteristics of Older Japanese Adults with Polypharmacy, Based on Regionally Representative Health Insurance Claims Data

We aimed to clarify the prevalence of polypharmacy among elderly individuals in Japan. We used the data obtained from a large-scale population-based representative database of health insurance claims in a single prefecture in Japan. We examined all of the outpatient and pharmaceutical health insurance claims for National Health Insurance and those for Late-stage Elderly Health Insurance in Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan between April and June 2016. When two or more claim forms were issued for a patient in a single month, we combined the data and identified the number of prescribed drugs for each person. The definition of polypharmacy is a the prescription of six or more drugs per month. We investigated the prevalence of polypharmacy among the beneficiaries of the two insurance systems. Of the 605,406 beneficiaries of the 2 insurance systems, 121,033 (20.0%) patients with polypharmacy were identified. The prevalence of polypharmacy increased with age, especially among the beneficiaries aged > 85 years, with about half of the beneficiaries having polypharmacy status. About half of the people aged > 85 years in the database had polypharmacy status. When a drug is prescribed to an elderly individual, it is necessary to consider the possibility of polypharmacy-related problems

Hyperleptinemia is associated with hypertension in Japanese males

Leptin is a hormone which is predominantly secreted by adipose tissue. Recent studies have shown that leptin increases arterial blood pressure. Although data from available animal studies clearly indicate an association between leptin and hypertension, results of human studies have been less definitive. We conducted a case-control study to examine the association between serum leptin levels and hypertension in 111 hypertensive subjects and 222 male controls, using conditional logistic regression analyses. Mean serum leptin levels were found to be marginally higher in the case subjects than in the control subjects (3.3 ng/ml versus 3.0 ng/ml), however, conditional logistic regression analysis revealed that subjects in the highest quartile had a significantly increased risk of hypertension compared with those in the lowest quartile, even after adjusting for drinking status and diabetes mellitus (adjusted OR, 2.11;95% CI, 1.01-4.39). Our findings suggest that leptin plays an important role in the development of hypertension.</p

Determination of Inorganic Anions in Environmental Samples by Capillary Electrophoresis

Concept and recent topics on environmental epidemiology have been introduced in the article. First, the authors presented the basic concept on epidemiology. Answers to the question "Is a particular exposure influent to human health?" can be obtained only from studies of human beings, using an epidemiologic approach. Environmental epidemiology is an application of epidemiology to environmental problem. Then, we presented four examples on environmental epidemiologic research. The four recent topics are residential radon exposure and lung cancer, ingested arsenic and cancer, increase incidence of childhood leukaemia around the English neuclear reprocessing facilities, and magnetic field and excess incidence of childhood leukaemia near Swedish high-voltage power lines

Determinant of the medical expenses of the elderly during the last seven month period of life

This study evaluated medical expenses during the last seven months of life in elderly patients aged seventy and over in a rulal town in Okayama prefecture from January 1992 to March 1995, using data from death certificates and medical fee claim records of the elderly. The findings were as follows : 1. The monthly expenses increased toward the last month of life. 2. In the multiple regression model, five independent variables (length of hospital stay, malignant disease, cerebral vascular desease, place of death, services of a visiting nurse) accounted for about 60% of the variance in medical expenses during the last seven-month period. 3. Inflation of medical expenses of the elderly during the premortem period of life was mainly related to long-term hospitalization. 4. In analysing medical expenses, controlling various factors related to long-term hospitalization was found to be important