Analyzing Patient-Sharing Network Using an Administrative Claim Database in Japan

Abstract

We analyzed the behavior of patient with a focus on patient-sharing based on the methodology of network analysis. We used an administrative healthcare claims database from September of the years 2008-2020 to identify shared patients with hypertension. The patients’ behavior of visiting multiple medical facilities was extracted as graphical data, and we calculated density and centrality as indicators to evaluate the structure of the patient sharing network. Our findings indicate that density, reciprocity, and transitivity increased over time, and that centrality and PageRank were correlated.