Abstract
Objective : The insured persons are obligated to participate in special health examination under “The Law Guaranteeing Health Care for the Elderly” enforced by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. The Ministry has set a goal to achieve such participation rates to 70% in 2012 and 80% in 2015. However, the mobile health screening system has been suffering from a low screening participation rate despite its inclusion of high percentage of persons with abnormal screening results. Thus, we examined the effectiveness of our proposed new screening system which is considered to increase its participation rate.
Method : Study subjects were 1, 193 wives and dependents of employees who are members of F Health Insurance Union. We conducted self-administered health screening of chronic diseases (of which reliability and validity has been confirmed by other screening organizations) both through the home screening and through the mobile screening. Then, we compared screening participation rates, age composition and abnormal results. Also, we examined those in another population.
Results : About thirty percent of members of F Health Insurance Union participated in health screening and more persons under 50 years of age through the home screening participated in health examination than through the mobile screening. Rates of those recommended for re-testing among persons taken health examination through the home screening were 1.9 times higher in urinalysis, 4.1 times higher in kidney analysis, and 5.4 times higher in glucose analysis for diabetes than among those taken tests through the mobile screening. Furthermore, rates of those recommended for the secondary examination among persons taken health examination through the home screening were 3.6 times higher in liver analysis and 10.8 times higher in glucose analysis for diabetes than among those taken tests through the mobile screening. The same trend was observed in another population in which we investigated.
Conclusion : It is concluded that conducting health examination both through the mobile screening and through the home screening among wives and dependents of the insured employees is more effective than conducting health examination through the mobile screening only based on our study results.
