Analyses of physician visits from childhood and adolescent cancer survivors

The main focus of the CAYACS program on health care service at BC Cancer Agency is the long-term effect on childhood and adolescent cancer survivors in multiple domains. This project conducts various analyses to evaluate frequency and cost of the physician visits in two different time scales, calendar time and individual time. Starting with cross-sectional analyses, we obtain results comparable to those from the previous CAYACS project in physician visits. We investigate the frequency and cost of the whole cohort over (calendar) time with time series analyses. Furthermore, in an individual time scale base, we analyze the physician visits to provide individual-specific inferences on the effects of risk factors with longitudinal models. The method in Diehr, et al (1999) is adapted to deal with the longitudinal physician visit costs with a positive mass on zero.