1Department of Chinese Medicine, Taipei City Hospital, Ren-Ai Branch. Department of
Health, Taipei City Government, Taipei, Taiwan
2School of Chinese Medicine, China Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan
3Institute of Public Health, National Yangming University, Taipei, Taiwan
4School of General Education Center, University of Taipei, Taipei, Taiwan
【Summary】
Introduction: The large-scale coronavirus epidemic is a major global public health challenge in the 21st century. Since the 2003 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic has caused a huge impact on public health and medical systems. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), as part of the medical system, must also respond appropriately when the epidemic occurs to provide better medical care for the people. However, the impact of large-scale coronavirus epidemic on the utilization rate and quality of traditional Chinese medicine has not been touched by research. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of large-scale coronavirus epidemic on the utilization rate and cost of traditional Chinese medicine, as well as the changes in the utilization rate of traditional Chinese medicine among different ethnic groups such as gender and age during the epidemic.
Method: This study is a retrospective cohort study. We used a sample database of millions of people from the Health and Welfare Data Science Center. We analyze the data of traditional Chinese medicine treatment from 2000 to 2004. In this study, a sample file of millions of people will be screened to select medical information of Taiwan National Health Insurance who have received Chinese medical treatment, including the date of medical treatment, diagnosis, treatment,
and cost. We will analyze the changes in the utilization rate of TCM and medical expenses from March 2003 to September 2003, and the results compared with last year.
Results: We included 64,196,836 TCM outpatient data, of which 13,357,263 were in 2002 and 14,554,405 in 2003. We found that during the epidemic of the severe acute respiratory syndrome, the number of outpatient visits in TCM clinics increased while the number of acupuncture visits declined. In May, when the epidemic was the worst, the total number of Chinese medicine surged by 1.3%, while the number of acupuncture fell by 5.1%. The number of outpatients of younger patients decreased more during the epidemic; the number of outpatients in Chinese medicine departments attached to the hospital dropped significantly, while the number of outpatients in Chinese medicine clinics increased significantly.
Conclusion: This study found that a large-scale coronavirus epidemic significantly affects the utilization rate and medical cost of Taiwanese traditional Chinese medicine, and has different effects on patients of different ages and diagnoses.
【Keywords】Coronavirus, large-scale epidemic, Taiwan, traditional Chinese
23S.6大規模冠狀病毒流行對台灣中醫使用及醫療花費之影響
