Establishment of a hospital-clinic liaison clinical pathway and the relationship thereof to the usage patterns for the regional clinic network designed for the administration of Peginterferon α-2b and ribavirin in chronic hepatitis C therapy

Abstract

　Peginterferonα-2b (IFN) and ribavirin (RBV) represent the treatment of choice for therapy to treat chronic infection wit

　The hospital-clinic liaison clinical pathway, specialized in PEG - IFN α-2b and RBV combination therapy, is the pathway through which the patients obtained the merits of using both the hospital and the local clinic.

　After using this hospital-clinic liaison clinical pathway for two years and six months, we analyzed which factors determined optimal utilization of the regional clinic network. We found that the use of this pathway was dependent on the work situation of the patients (p=0.029)．The regional clinic network was significantly established for patients whose local clinic was a contract medical institution with the hepatitis interferon treatment pay grant system (p=0.002).