Comparing Korea Occupational Safety & Health Agency and National Health Insurance Service’s cardio-cerebrovascular diseases risk-assessment tools using data from one hospital’s health checkups

BACKGROUND: Cardio-cerebrovascular diseases (CVDs) are the most common cause of death worldwide. Various CVD risk assessment tools have been developed. In South Korea, the Korea Occupational Safety & Health Agency (KOSHA) and the National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) have provided CVD risk assessments with health checkups. Since 2018, the KOSHA guide has stated that NHIS CVD risk assessment tool could be used as an alternative of KOSHA assessment tool for evaluating CVD risk of workers. The objective of this study was to determine the correlation and agreement between the KOSHA and the NHIS CVD risk assessment tools. METHODS: Subjects of this study were 17,485 examinees aged 20 to 64 years who had undergone medical examinations from January 2021 to December 2021 at a general hospital. We classified subjects into low-risk, moderate-risk, high-risk, and highest-risk groups according to KOSHA and NHIS’s CVD risk assessment tools. We then compared them with cross-analysis, Spearman correlation analysis, and linearly weighted kappa coefficient. RESULTS: The correlation between KOSHA and NHIS tools was statistically significant (p-value < 0.001), with a correlation coefficient of 0.403 and a kappa coefficient of 0.203. When we compared risk group distribution using KOSHA and NHIS tools, CVD risk of 6,498 (37.1%) participants showed a concordance. Compared to the NHIS tool, the KOSHA tool classified 9,908 (56.7%) participants into a lower risk category and 1,079 (6.2%) participants into a higher risk category. CONCLUSIONS: In this study, KOSHA and NHIS tools showed a moderate correlation with a fair agreement. The NHIS tool showed a tendency to classify participants to higher CVD risk group than the KOSHA tool. To prevent CVD more effectively, a higher estimation tool among verified CVD risk assessment methods should be selected and managements such as early intervention and treatment of risk factors should be performed targeting the high-risk group.