A Study on Hospital's Intention to Join Network with Private Health Insurance

의료기관의 민간보험사와의 네트워크 구축 의향

This study was conducted to evaluate needs and intention of hospitals and clinics to join network with private health insurance, and to discover obstacles of participation of the networks. We carried out the questionnaire survey of the network managers of 236 medical institutions between December 27th, 2005 and January 25th, 2006. The result showed that the participation intention of network were different to the type of hospitals. Primary care clinics answered that participation intention and possibility were low. Secondary care hospitals was relatively affirmative regarding a network participation. Tertiary hospitals responded that they need the network with private health insurance, but participation possibility was lower than needs. The reason is that they worried about the side effect of the network with private health insurance. Depending on the type of hospitals, expected benefits from networking with private health insurance were different. We found that hospitals which already had affiliation with other hospitals answered in the affirmative regarding the network with private health insurance. In conclusion, to increase the effectiveness of network systems between hospital and private health insurance, the network is expected to consider different needs of the each hospital.