Impact of Continuity of Care on Patterns of Care, Outcomes, and Medical Costs

Continuity of care is an important health policy issue worldwide. In Taiwan, patients are free to seek health care from physicians of any hospital accreditation levels. However, patients’ disease treatment, monitoring, and care may be influenced by their health care-seeking behavior and may be compromised due to lack of coordinated care. Therefore, this study aims to investigate continuity of care of those in need of long-term intensive care or/and follow-up (chronic disorders and precancers) and associated factors, and evaluate the impact of levels of continuity of care on disease treatments and monitoring, medication adherence, use and costs of health services, and disease progression. The subjects of this study and their use and costs of medical care in the observation period will be selected and collected from data sets such as the National Health Insurance claims data obtained from the Health and Welfare Data Science Center, Ministry of Health and Welfare (HWDC, MOHW). The findings of this study will be of help to understand the importance of coordinated care for certain diseases, and can be adopted for future health policy interventions, improving treatment effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of medical resources through improving patients’ quality of care.

Project ID:PF10601-0846
External Project ID:MOST105-2410-H182-015-MY2