| Abstract: | Motive:
Control of medical expense has always been a tough issue faced by developed countries altogether. A variety of payment system set up aims to effectively reduce the increase of medical expense. Cancer has been in the rank of ten major cause of death for several years. Thus, the ratio of medical expense for cancer treatment has been relatively high in the proportion of healthcare medical budget. In particular, according to the list recording the total ratio of individual inpatients, the frequency of cancer inpatients admitted and receiving chemotherapy ranks top four in the year of 90. Hence, proper and reasonable distribution on medical expense is a crucial subject to work on. Nevertheless, different hospitals implement their own management system, which may generate variations on the approaches of medical expense control.
Purpose:
The purpose of this study aims to discuss the condition in terms of how medical resources of chemotherapy are utilized while different cancer inpatients receive treatment from different hospitals with their own hospital characters.
Subjects and Method:
The participants of this study include cancer inpatients of lung cancer, breast cancer, and rectum cancer. The researcher, based on the number of times these cancer inpatients admitted to the hospitals and received chemotherapy, analyze and discuss the utilization of medical resources among various hospitals with different characters. T-test, ANOVA, and multiple regression are used as statistical measures.
Results:
The results show that age of cancer inpatients and degree of illness result into different utilization of medical resources. Provided that cancer inpatients, who suffer from higher degree of illness, stay more days in the hospital, it can cause the increase of such utilization. Moreover, presented from the study, the type, ownership, and regions of the hospitals generate influence on medical treatment expense. In terms of
hospital type, the expense of medical center is apparently higher than that of the hospitals of other type. As for ownership, the expense varies due to different types of cancer disease. However, it is also shown that provided that clinics have evidence-based medical as guidelines, the characters of hospitals would not influence doctor?s behaviors. Hence, under such circumstance, the consistency of medical resource utilization is relatively high. |
