141st APHA Annual Meeting

In This section

286992
Hospitalization for bicycle-related injuries in Taiwan

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Ming Chin Yang, PhD , Institute of Health Policy and Management, National Taiwan University, Taipei City, Taiwan
YiFan Li , Institution of Health Policy and Management, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan
Background: Cycling has always been a very popular means of transportation and a leisure activity recently. However, bicycle-related injuries should be given recognition as a significant issue because of the annual mortality rate increased and heavy cost due to cycling injuries. The purposes of this study were to describe the bicycle-related injury hospitalization, and to examine the association between health care utilization and patients' characteristics in Taiwan.

Methods: This secondary data analysis was a retrospective cross sectional study. Data came from the 2007 hospitalization claims in National Health Insurance data set. Study samples were identified as those hospitalizations with ICD9-CM external cause of injury codes related to bicycle-related injuries. We hypothesized that the number of hospitalization, the length of stays (LOS), and medical expenditures vary by patients' gender, age, injury type, and collision with vehicles. We took log transformation of LOS and expenditures to adjust for the skewed nature before analyzing multiple linear regression. Results: In terms of diagnoses of injury, fracture ranked the first (47.1%), followed by TBI (33.8%). Regarding the types of traffic accident, most of the hospitalizations (74.6%) were collisions with vehicles involving cars or motorcycles. Patients who aged more than 65 years old, and waived copayment had significantly longer LOS (p<0.05). Conclusions: We found that the hospitalizations distribution of bicycle-related injuries differed from patients' demographic characteristics. This finding can be used to promote bicycle safety on preventing injuries through different stakeholders such as health, or transportation, and local governments.

Learning Areas:
Epidemiology
Planning of health education strategies, interventions, and programs
Public health administration or related administration
Public health or related public policy
Public health or related research
Social and behavioral sciences

Learning Objectives:
Describe bicycle-related injury hospitalizations in Taiwan

Keywords: Injury, Health Care Utilization

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have been accepted the National Science Council funded grants focusing on the health care utilization and economic evaluation. Among my scientific interests were public health and health care utilization.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

Back to: 4173.0: Global violence and injury