한국의료패널을 활용한 고혈압환자의 복약순응도가 의료이용 및 의료비 지출에 미치는 영향 분석

Relationship between Antihypertension Medication Adherence, Medical Utilizations, and Medical Expenditure Among Patients with Hypertension

Objective: Using the Korean Health Panel data (KHP) of 2008 and 2009, this paper analyzed the effect of anti- hypertension medication adherence on the changes in medical service utilization and medical expenditure in the next year. Method: Through a face-to-face interview survey, KHP has provided an extensive data on demographic characteristics, med- ical utilizations behavior, medical expenditure and health behaviors of the targeted households and their members since 2008. KHP is recognized as highly accurate regarding medical expenditure in that it makes the target households to record ‘Health diary’ whenever they use healthcare service, which could minimize their cognitive bias or memory distortion. The 2010 KHP data was based on the interview from 6,432 households and 19,697 household members. Two part model was used to explore the effects of medication adherence on medical use (logistic regression analysis) and medical expenditures (OLS). Result: Our study result demonstrated that the 74.7% of the patients who strictly adhere to their medication in both years, in 2008 and in 2009, were likely to use inpatient service in 2010. This shows the noncompliant patients were in fact use emergency service less than the compliant patients. Conclusion: Based on our analysis, this paper concludes that the high medication adherence of hypertensive patients could contribute to reduce the emergency service use. Therefore it is highly recommendable for the Korean government and the insurer, NHIS, to actively invest in developing education and pro-motion program to improve medication adherence among hypertensive patients.