Taiwan National Health Insurance (Taiwan NHI) is a nationwide, single-payer health insurance program that is compulsory for all citizens. Taiwan NHI was established in 1995, and 99% of Taiwan's 23 million citizens were covered in 1998. The Taiwanese government ordered the National Health Research Institutes (NHRI) to construct and manage the National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD). The NHIRD handles all of the claims data of Taiwan NHI, including the registry for beneficiaries, ambulatory and inpatient care, prescription records, and other medical services. The NHRI renews the database annually. To protect the confidentiality of the insured subjects, the NHRI removed the original identification number and published the database with an encoded identification number to link each medical service file. This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of China Medical University in central Taiwan (CMU104-REC2–115).
The disease diagnosis record system in the NHIRD is categorized according to the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM). The cancer history of each patient was collected from a catastrophic illness patient registry, a subcomponent of the NHIRD. PLA- and PLC-associated comorbidity data were collected from inpatient files.
The disease diagnosis record system in the NHIRD is categorized according to the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM). The cancer history of each patient was collected from a catastrophic illness patient registry, a subcomponent of the NHIRD. PLA- and PLC-associated comorbidity data were collected from inpatient files.
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