PLoS ONE (Jan 2012)

Medical care and payment for diabetes in China: enormous threat and great opportunity.

  • Wenying Yang,
  • Wenhui Zhao,
  • Jianzhong Xiao,
  • Rui Li,
  • Ping Zhang,
  • Katarzyna Kissimova-Skarbek,
  • Erin Schneider,
  • Weiping Jia,
  • Linong Ji,
  • Xiaohui Guo,
  • Zhongyan Shan,
  • Jie Liu,
  • Haoming Tian,
  • Li Chen,
  • Zhiguang Zhou,
  • Qiuhe Ji,
  • Jiapu Ge,
  • Gang Chen,
  • Jonathan Brown

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0039513
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 7, no. 9
p. e39513

Abstract

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BackgroundThe Diabetes Impact Study followed up a large national population-based screening study to estimate the use of and expenditures for medical care caused by diabetes in China and to ascertain the use and cost of essential basic medicines and care.MethodsIn 2009-10, the study team interviewed 1482 adults with diabetes and 1553 adults with glucose tolerance in the normal range from population-based random samples at 12 sites in China. The response rate was 67%.FindingsAfter adjusting for age, sex, and urban/rural location, people with diabetes received 1.93 times more days of inpatient treatment, 2.40 times more outpatient visits, and 3.35 times more medications than people with normal glucose tolerance (all pConclusionsIn China, health care use and costs were dramatically higher for people with diabetes than for people with normal glucose tolerance and, in relative terms, much higher than in industrialized countries. Low-cost generic medicines that would reduce diabetes expenditures were not fully used.