A Survey for the Hospital Utilization of Cancer patients in Inchon / 대한암학회지

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the hospital utilization of cancer patients in Inchon and to assess the feasibility of Inchon Cancer Registry (ICR). MATERIALS AND METHODS: We used two data sources from Korean Central Cancer Registry (KCCR) and Korean Medical Insurance (KMI) for analysis. RESULTS: KCCR data analysis showed that 50.8% of cancer patients visited hospitals in Seoul, 46% visited hospitals in Inchon, and 2.6% in other areas at first visit. The analysis of KMI data showed that 43% of cancer patients visited hospital in Seoul, 38.5% visited hospitals in Inchon, and 18.5% in other areas at first visit. From these results, we found many cancer patients visited hospitals located in Seoul. We estimated that 52.1% would be missed when we performed cancer registry project in Inchon area alone from the KCCR data analysis. On the other hand, 60% would be missed from the KMI data. However, if we used registration data at the nation-wide level and actively registered cancer patient data in Inchan, expected unregistration rates would be 5%. CONCLUSION: Even though registration rate to KCCR was relatively low (74%) in Inhon and many patients were treated in other area, we are convinced that almast all cancer patients would be registered because most cancer patients visited at least one of the cancer registry hospitals at the nation-wide level. Therefore, if ICR used KCCR and encouraged the hospitals in Inchon to actively participate in cancer registration, the population-based cancer registration in Inchon would be possible.