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Abstract

The health of physicians may influence the quality of the national health care; only physicians with sound health may deliver high quality health services. We investigated the risk of cancer of the doctors in Taiwan by analyzing data from National Health Insurance Research Database (including 1. registry for medical personnel, 2. registry for catastrophic illness patients, 3. overall health care claims 2000 ~ 2012 and Taiwan Cancer Registry File. We included all doctors aged over 25 who have practice registration in 2000. The control group included all non-health care people with same age limit in 2000. The exclusion criteria were previous history of cancers, AIDS and organ transplant. We conducted propensity score matches of 1:1 with gender, age, residence urbanization and severity of comorbidity. The overall cancer risks in doctors were 10% lower than general population. Among doctors, male doctors had 37% lower risk for cancers. The risk of cancer rose with increasing age and increasing severity of comorbidity. The common cancers in doctors and general population were different. The 6 major cancers in doctors were breast cancer, colorectal cancer, prostate cancer, hepatoma, lung cancer and ovarian cancer. Compared to general population, doctors had higher risks of prostate cancer and thyroid cancer.

Biography

Hsu is an experienced clinical doctor, also paying special participattion in public health and hospital management. Having practiced for over 15 years, with his private clinics, he changed his tract by completing his MPH degree at Harvard University, followed by PhD degree at China Medical University, Taiwan. He has published over 15 papers in reputed journals including several published at some high ranking journals in the past 5 years. He is currently engaged in cardiovascular risk of patients with chronic kidney disease, and doctors’ health.

Email: john.yh.hsu@gmail.com