TABLE 1.
Demographic and sociological distributions of patients who initiated treatment with the medicines of interest before and after the public health insurance coverage (2016–2018).
| Demographic and sociological characteristics of patients included in the study | No. of patients n (%) | No. of patients who initiated treatment with medicines of interest before the public health insurance coverage | No. of patients who initiated treatment with medicines of interest after the public health insurance coverage | Test of the differences of distributions of patients who initiated treatment with medicines of interest between 2017 and 2018 | No. of patients who initiated treatment with gefitinib (2016–2018) n (%) | No. of patients who initiated treatment with icotinib (2016–2018) n (%) | Test of the difference of distributions between patients who initiated treatment with gefitinib and patients who initiated treatment with icotinib (2016–2018) | |||
| 2016 n (%) | 2017 n (%) | 2018 n (%) | χ 2 | p | χ 2 | p | ||||
| Type of health insurance coverage | ||||||||||
| Formal employee program enrollee entitled with government-funded supplementary health insurance coverage | 73 (8.3) | 0 (0.0) | 38 (9.6) | 35 (7.3) | 7.02 | 0.03 | 51 (8.4) | 22 (8.0) | 2.73 | 0.26 |
| Other formal employee health insurance program enrollee | 286 (32.6) | 2 (20.0) | 143 (36.1) | 141 (29.6) | 207 (34.0) | 79 (28.7) | ||||
| Resident program enrollee | 524 (59.3) | 8 (80.0) | 301 (63.1) | 350 (57.6) | 174 (63.3) | |||||
| Gender | ||||||||||
| Male | 395 (44.7) | 6 (60.0) | 159 (40.2) | 230 (48.2) | 5.70 | 0.02 | 257 (42.3) | 138 (50.0) | 4.80 | 0.03 |
| Female | 488 (55.3) | 4 (40.0) | 237 (59.8) | 247 (51.8) | 351 (57.7) | 137 (50.0) | ||||
| Age | ||||||||||
| <50 years old | 118 (13.4) | 1 (10.0) | 51 (12.9) | 66 (13.8) | 0.82 | 0.85 | 83 (13.6) | 35 (12.8) | 7.57 | 0.06 |
| 50–60 years old | 194 (22.0) | 3 (30.0) | 90 (22.7) | 101 (21.2) | 144 (23.7) | 50 (18.2) | ||||
| 60–70 years old | 317 (35.9) | 5 (50.0) | 137 (34.6) | 175 (36.7) | 222 (36.5) | 95 (34.5) | ||||
| >70 years old | 254 (28.8) | 1 (10.0) | 118 (29.8) | 135 (28.3) | 159 (26.1) | 95 (34.6) | ||||
| Local medical patient | ||||||||||
| Yes | 864 (97.8) | 10 (100.0) | 392 (99.0) | 462 (96.9) | 4.63 | 0.03 | 602 (99.0) | 262 (95.3) | 12.58 | <0.01 |
| No | 19 (2.2) | 0 (0.0) | 4 (1.0) | 15 (3.1) | 6 (1.0) | 13 (4.7) | ||||
| Employment status | ||||||||||
| Retired | 280 (31.7) | 1 (10.0) | 147 (37.1)a | 132 (27.7)a | 264.14 | <0.01 | 198 (32.6)* | 82 (29.8)* | 25.76 | <0.01 |
| Formal employed | 61 (6.9) | 0 (0.0) | 28 (7.1)a | 33 (6.9)a | 44 (7.2) | 17 (6.2) | ||||
| Flexible employed | 179 (20.3) | 9 (90.0) | 156 (39.4)b | 14 (2.9)b | 146 (24.0)† | 33 (12.0)† | ||||
| Non-employed | 363 (41.1) | 0 (0.0) | 65 (16.4)c | 298 (62.5)c | 220 (36.2)‡ | 143 (52.0)‡ | ||||
| Total | 883 | 10 | 396 | 477 | — | — | 608 | 275 | — | — |
| 873 | ||||||||||
Notes: Bold means that the distributions were statistically different (p < 0.05). Employment status subgroups with different superscripts implied statistically significant differences of patient distributions in 2017 and 2018; patient adopted gefitinib and icotinib for treatment after pairwise comparison with Bonferroni correction (p < 0.0083).