BACKGROUND:

Little is known about how a universal National Health Insurance program with cost-containment strategies affect costs and quality of diabetes care.

OBJECTIVES:

To examine the trends of healthcare use and costs for patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in Taiwan over the last decade, and to identify factors associated with high healthcare cost and poor diabetes care.

RESEARCH DESIGN:

We delineated the pattern of healthcare use and costs for T2DM in 2000-2010. Generalized linear and logistic regression models were used to identify factors associated with medical costs and diabetes care.

SUBJECTS:

Representative adult T2DM patients and age-matched and sex-matched nondiabetes individuals were selected from the 2000, 2005, and 2010 National Health Insurance Research Databases.

MEASURES:

Healthcare use included physician visits, hospital admissions, and antidiabetic drug prescriptions. Indicators of diabetes management included completeness of recommended diabetes tests and medication adherence, assessed using medication possession ratio.

RESULTS:

The total healthcare cost per diabetes patient was approximately 2.8-fold higher than that for nondiabetes individual. The growth of healthcare cost per diabetes patient was significantly contained by about 3694 New Taiwan dollars (3.6%) between 2005 and 2010, but diabetes care improved over the decade. Diabetes duration, income, place of residence, continuity of care, and enrollment to a pay-for-performance program were associated with healthcare costs and diabetes management. Some public health measures implemented to support diabetes care were also discussed.

CONCLUSIONS:

Healthcare costs could be controlled without sacrificing the quality of diabetes care by implementing pay-for-performance programs and effective health policies favorable for diabetes care.