Complementing conventional infectious disease surveillance with national health insurance claims data in the Republic of Korea

Abstract

Surveillance remains an important tool for timely outbreak detection and response. Many countries, including Korea, have established national infectious disease surveillance systems with clinical notification. We aimed to evaluate the National Health Insurance Claims-based Surveillance (NHICS) compared to conventional passive report-based National Infectious Diseases Surveillance (NIDS). Reported to claimed cases ratios (R/C ratio) were evaluated from monthly notifiable disease cases captured by NIDS and NHICS. The relationships between 26 infectious diseases and each surveillance system were analysed using Pearson’s correlation analysis and linear regression. There was an overall increase in R/C ratio from 2010–2017 (0.37 to 0.78). In 22 infectious diseases, there was a correlation between NIDS and NHICS. Moreover, claim-based surveillance showed less fluctuating disease incidence rates than report-based surveillance for specific infectious diseases, such as varicella, mumps, and scarlet fever. However, for infectious diseases with episodic outbreaks or low incidence, it was difficult to assess NHICS usefulness. Claim-based surveillance is less affected by limitations of conventional report-based surveillance systems, such as reporting rate. Given delays in claim systems, a claim-based surveillance is expected to be complementary to conventional systems for the detection of various infectious diseases with the advancement of bio-information technology.

Recent increase in pertussis incidence in Korea: an age-period-cohort analysis

“…Since the reporting criteria for pertussis include suspected cases, the sharp increase starting from the 2013-2015 calendar year reflects the situation of South Korea in 2015 regarding the MERS outbreak. The effect of the MERS outbreak on reporting behavior has also been described in previous E p u b a h e a d o f p r i n t research, in which an interrupted time series analysis results showed an increase in the overall report of notifiable diseases, since the MERS outbreak [39].…”

“…According to a previous study that calculated the reporting and claim ratio (R/C ratio) of infectious diseases in South Korea, none of the VPDs showed an R/C ratio close to 1, neither did it exceed 0.5 [39]. Second, these data do not provide information about vaccination history, indicating that the study results simply assumed the effect of vaccination.…”

Impact of COPD on COVID-19 prognosis: A nationwide population-based study in South Korea

“…The HIRA claim database includes 46 million patients per year, approximately 90% of the total population in Korea, from almost 80,000 healthcare service provides 8 . The HIRA dataset comprises all insurance benefit claims by medical service providers and includes general sociodemographic information, diagnoses according to the 10th revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-10), the medical institution, medications prescribed, medical costs and survival status 9 . The HIRA shared nationwide data on 7590 patients infected with COVID-19 between January 20 (date of the first confirmed case) and May 27, 2020, with researchers in South Korea.…”

Beyond the fear: Nurses’ experiences caring for patients with Middle East respiratory syndrome: A phenomenological study

“…The outbreak and spread of new infectious diseases has been promoted via active exchanges following changes to the environmental ecosystem and globalisation (Meng, 2015). Experts predict that a new epidemic is possible and represents a global threat (Jung et al, 2019). Representative cases of newly emerging infectious diseases in South Korea include severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003, novel influenza A (H1N1) in 2009 and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) in 2015.…”

“…In Korea, the novel influenza A epidemic in May 2009 led to recognition of the need to reinforce response infrastructure for newly emerging infectious diseases, including expansion of the quarantine system and surveillance network, improvement of patient isolation and disease diagnosis/treatment systems, stockpiling of medicines and medical devices, and education and training of medical personnel (Jeong, Park, Wang, & Kim, 2015). It has been predicted that Korea's ability to cope with newly emerging infectious diseases in preparation for a pandemic would be insufficient (Wang, 2014), and when MERS occurred in 2005, it spread rapidly due to insufficient medical systems and resources, and the government's improper response, which engendered fear in medical staff and the public (Jung et al, 2019).…”