Background Traffic injury is the leading external cause of unintentional injury in Taiwan. The aim of this study was to determine the utilisation of emergency-visit, hospitalisation, and medical expenditures by different type of vehicle crash.

Methods Claim data were collected from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database for patients who were identified from the Taiwan National Traffic Accident Dataset from 2003 to 2012. Measurements included type of medical utilisation, medical expenditures, and type of vehicle crash. Frequency counts, percentages and 95% confident interval were estimated for descriptive analyses. Mann-Kendall test was used to determine time trend of medical utilisation and medical expenditures by car types.

Results Over the period 2003 to 2012, the results of time trend test showed that the percentage of hospitalisation due to traffic injury had significantly decreased with years, however, the ER-visit utilisation increased from 27.4% in 2003 to 34.2% in 2012. In addition, both of the total medical expenditure of ER-visit and hospitalisation had significantly increased by years. In 2012, the total medical expenditure of ER-visit, hospitalisation was over 16.6 million US dollars and 47.4 million US dollars respectively. After stratification of car types, the ER-visit utilisation, total ER expenditure and total hospitalisation expenditure among two-wheeler drivers remained significantly increased by years. Although the ER-visit and medical utilisation among four-wheeler drivers was significantly decreased, the total medical expenditure of ER-visit among four-wheeler drivers had been significantly increased

Conclusions Effective traffic injury prevention programs are needed to develop for reducing the burden of public health and medical services.