Data source
This study analyzed the National Health Insurance Research Database
(NHIRD) that contains the healthcare data of almost 99% of Taiwan’s
entire population, approximately 23 million NHI beneficiaries. The
database includes all insurance claims data, including outpatient
visits, emergency visits, and hospitalizations. The Longitudinal Health
Insurance Database, (LHID) is a subset of the NHIRD comprising one
million individuals randomly sampled from the 23 million NHI
beneficiaries for the period from 1999 to 2013.[16] The data of
patients were de-identified prior to release to the users, in accordance
with privacy protocols, and this study was approved by the Institutional
Review Board of Chung Shan Medical University Hospital (IRB no.
CS15134).