The purpose of this study is to find how does market orientation of specialty hospital affects customer orientation, professionalism, job satisfaction and performance. Consequently, the correlation between market orientation and performance can be identified and more effective guideline for marketing strategy can be draw through this study. Data were collected from 302 employees in 6 hospitals using a standardized questionnaire. This study analyzed the research model using structural equation model. The findings of this paper are as followings; 1. Customer orientation and professionalism had been affected directly by market orientation. 2. Performance has been affected directly by customer orientation and job satisfaction. 3. Job satisfaction has been affected directly by professionalism. 4. Performance has been affected indirectly by professionalism via job satisfaction.

The objectives of the present study is to examine the validity of Charlson Comorbidity Index(CCI) based on medical record data; to utilize the index to determine outcome indexes such as mortality, length of stay and cost for the domestic patients whose have received total hip arthroplasty. Based on medical record date, 1-year Mortality was analyzed to be 0.664 of C statistic. The $R^2$ for the predictability for length of stay and the cost was about 0.0181, 0.1842. Fee of national health insurance and total cost including the cost not covered by insurance, also had statistically significance above 3 points of Charlson point score(p=0.0290, 0.0472; $p.{\le}0.05$). The 1-year mortality index, length of stay and cost of the total hip arthroplasty patients which was obtained utilizing CCI have a limitative prediction power and therefore should be carefully analyzed for use.

This study focused on finding the variation of medical service utilization, paths of medical service utilization and medical payments of the patients died by cerebrovascular diseases. For this study, data of the one-year episodes of the health insurance subscribers died in 2004 were selected. The frequency of medical visits, the lengths of stays, the days of outpatient visits, the total period of medical services and the total medical payments were compared by the characteristics of the suppliers and utilizers. This study is useful in reviewing the equity of medical service utilization because it analyzed variance in utilization by episodes. In oder to collect accurate data of the patients died by cerebrovascular diseases in 2004 the 2004 reimbursement data of all medical institutions were matched to the data of funeral fee payment by the National Health Insurance Corporation from January 2004 to May 2005. The major results of the study are as follows. The variation of medical service utilization of cerebrovascular diseases was influenced by supplier factors suppliers, such as types and locations of medical institutions and user factors such as sex and age. It was suspected that the reimbursement by fee-for-service contributed to the variation quite a lot, but we could not compare the variation between the different reimbursement systems in Korea. On the basis of analyzing results this study suggests that the factors of suppliers and utilizers should be reviewed to reduce the under use and over use expressed by variations of medical service. The processes of care, effective communication and management system should be investigated for the equity of medical service utilization and also. alternative medical services would be recommended to reduce the high medical payment. Additionally to find other causes of variation further in depth study controling the severity of diseases, socio-economic status of the users and the system factors is required.

A systematic review of the literatures was conducted to evaluate the effect of clinical practice guideline. The 77 studies were identified from a computerized search of published research on MEDLINE, Science-Direct and Blackwell synergy from January, 1997 to October, 2007. The main search terms were "clinical practice guideline" and "effectiveness", "clinical practice guideline" and "impact", "clinical practice guideline" and "evaluation". These studies were assessed the Quality twice by one Qualified expert and converted into weighted scale. The 63 studies were eligible inclusion criteria and subdivided into type of effect. Final indicator using for policy effect of clinical practice guidelines were classified as 4 categories; "improvement of outcomes" in 81 studies, "betterment in practice patterns" in 68 studies, "rationalization in resource utilization" in 84 studies and "cost containment" in 31 studies. The vote-counting method, one of meta-analysis method, was applied to summarized the effect of clinical practice guidelines and test statistically. From results of meta analysis, all indices were statistically significant. In conclusion, this meta-analysis showed that introduction of clinical practice guidelines were resulted positive outcomes in health policy.

In this study, the authors developed typologies of failures and recovery strategies in healthcare services, adopting the research framework of Kelley et al.(1993), Hoffman, et al.(1995), and Forbes et al.(2005). Data were collected form a sample of 559 respondents recruited in several regions of Korea through self-administered questionnaires. Data collection was done at hospitals and clinics respondents were visiting. The study has identified typologies of 21 failures and 10 recovery strategies in health care services. Results shows that "insufficient explanation by doctors" was the most frequent service failure followed by "insincere attitude of administrative employees" and "insincere attitude of nurses. "The type of recovery (compensation) that most of the respondents have received was apology from the healthcare service providers while the recovery that most respondents wanted to receive was sufficient explanation, suggesting that there is a significant gap between what is wanted and what is offered. Implications for healthcare service providers as well as limitations of the current study were discussed. Directions for further research were also suggested.

Recently, a long strike by hospital labor union emerged as a serious social issue. During the Worldcup Games in June, 2002, labor strikes broke up at 'C', 'K' and other hospitals, and in 2007, 'Y' hospital suffered much from a strike. Such series of extreme labor disputes have awakened people of importance of a more stable labor-management relationship for the medical institutions responsible for people's health than any other business organization. The purpose of this study was to examine the labor-management disputes at 'Y' hospital in 2007 and 'C' and 'K' hospitals in 2002. The results of this study can be summarized as follows; First, requests of the labor union such as pay raise, reemployment of the irregular workers as regular employees and participation of the labor union in personnel affairs are the long-held or core issues suffered by the medical institutions. Such issues are not independent from each other but complicated with each other surrounding the pay raise. Accordingly, it is not easy to determine the genuine bone of issue for labor-management disputes. Second, the model type of disputes between labor and management at medical institutions may be strike. However, it is conceived that the type of disputes would be subject to change as the essential medical service area system began to be operated since 2008. Third, the common characteristic of the labor strike among the 3 sample hospitals was occupation of the hospital lobby for a sit-in strike to maximize the negative effects of strike. Article 42 (Prohibition of Violence) of Labor Union and Labor Relation Coordination Act prohibits occupation of production or other important business facilities. In addition, since Ministry of Labor interprets that the hospital lobby belongs to the important business facilities enumerated by Article 42 of the above act, occupation of the hospital lobby for a sit-in strike may be too controversial to be admitted as a fair act of labor dispute when its legitimacy should be judged. Fourth, the counter-measures taken by the hospitals against the strike were observance of the principle 'no labor no pay,' closure, legal action, accusation, claim for recovery of damage, provisional seizure, disciplinary punishment, etc., but the principle of 'no labor, no pay' was not applied in a fair manner by 'C' and 'K' hospitals. However, 'Y' hospital applied this principle thoroughly to the strike; the hospital conduced to correction of the wrong labor-management relationship by refusing inclusion in the labor collective agreement of a provision about payment of wage during the period of strike or labor union's request to that effect during a strike. In addition, 'Y' hospital took an effective measure to end the strike earlier by notifying the labor union of cancellation of the collective agreement and banning the unionists from entering the hospital.