The effect of Taiwan's National Health Insurance on infants' preventive care use and inpatient care use.
OBJECTIVE
To test whether utilization of infant preventive care services has reduced utilization of inpatient care and to determine whether implementation of Taiwan's National Health Insurance (NHI) has brought about any differences in the utilization of infant health care services.


METHODS
Data were taken from the 1989 and 1996 National Maternal and Infant Health Surveys (NMIHSs). In total, 1662 and 3623 effective samples were used in the study from the 2 years.


METHODS
We constructed a simultaneous recursive model to obtain efficient estimates by treating preventive care (neonatal care and well-baby care) and inpatient care (hospitalization admissions) as dependent variables.


RESULTS
Utilization of neonatal care had strongly negative significant coefficients for the likelihood of being admitted to the hospital. The impact of the NHI was found to be significant.


CONCLUSIONS
The hypothesis that the NHI interferes with the effectiveness of preventive care at reducing inpatient care use was not reinforced. Since support from the NHI depends on a balance of push and pull between access to inpatient care and the benefits of preventive care, it can further improve infant health by promoting the benefits of preventive care while making both types of care more accessible.
Chen
Chin-Shyan
CS
Department of Economics National Taipei University, Taipei, Taiwan.
Liu
Tsai-Ching
TC
Lin
Herng-Ching
HC
Tian
Wei-Hua
WH
D002662:Child Health Services / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D019538:Health Care Surveys; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D007297:Inpatients; D009313:National Health Programs; D011314:Preventive Health Services / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D015397:Program Evaluation; D013624:Taiwan