#0100 Association between mandatory health examination attendance and diabetes treatment initiation among employees being treated for hypertension
Employer-Based Health Examinations Promote Diabetes Treatment Initiation Among People Already Being Treated for Hypertension
With many people in today’s world living sedentary lifestyles and eating high-fat diets, hypertension is a common condition. Diabetes mellitus is a common comorbidity in people with hypertension, and the co-occurrence of hypertension and diabetes mellitus substantially increases an individual’s risk of developing cardiovascular disease. It is therefore critically important for individuals with both hypertension and diabetes mellitus to initiate treatment for diabetes as soon as possible.
In Japan, workers must undergo annual employer-based health examinations. These examinations provide an opportunity for clinicians to detect illnesses and urge patients to seek treatment, and we wondered whether attendance at mandatory employer-based health examinations increases the likelihood that a worker already undergoing treatment for hypertension will start undergoing treatment for diabetes mellitus.
To address this research question, we turned to a database that contains the health insurance claims data and health examination results of persons enrolled in society-managed health insurance plans in Japan. We focused on data concerning 1,464 employees aged 40–59 years who, while already being treated for hypertension, initiated treatment for diabetes between April 2012 and December 2016. We then conducted analyses to determine whether a higher-than-expected number of those individuals began receiving treatment for diabetes shortly after an employer-based health examination.
Our analyses showed that the employees in the dataset were 1.89 times more likely to initiate treatment for diabetes during the 90 days after an employer-based health examination than they were during any other part of the year. A detailed description of our results appears in an article recently published in the Journal of Occupational Health.
This finding supports the hypothesis that attending an employer-based health examination increases the likelihood that a worker who is receiving treatment for hypertension will begin receiving treatment for diabetes as well. It also indicates that mandatory employer-based health examinations can serve as a useful complement to diabetes screenings performed in outpatient healthcare settings.
Link to the original journal article:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/1348-9585.12183
Title of the paper:
Association between mandatory health examination attendance and diabetes treatment initiation among employees being treated for hypertension
Authors:
Hayato Yamana, Sachiko Ono, Akira Okada, Taisuke Jo, and Hideo Yasunaga
