2022 Volume 16 Issue 1 Pages 59-69
Objectives: As the pandemic started in early 2020, WHO assigned a special emergency ICD-10 code to Covid-19. Japan followed it by assigning a special code for disease classification of health insurance claims. The author analyzed health insurance claims data to estimate health care cost spent for Covid-19.
Methods: Japan Health Insurance Association (JHIA), provides aggregated claims data as open data. The JHIA data are aggregated by sex, age groups, prefectures, in/outpatient and, most importantly, disease classifications. JHIA enrolls approximately 35% of Japan's population younger than 75 years old. The author analyzed the JHIA data focusing on claims containing Covid-19 as principal diagnoses.
Results: Approximately 101 billion yen were spent for approximately 2.4 million claims containing “Covid-19” code as their principal diagnoses. When applied to the national population, approximately 390 billion yen were spent for Covid-19 in 19 months (March 2020-September 2021), slightly less than 1% of Japan's national health care expenditures.
Conclusion: Health insurance claims data may effectively be used as a supplement to the infectious diseases surveillance to monitor the utilization pattern of infected patients.
