• 한국노년학
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.467-485
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• 2012

National Health Insurance Corporation initiated Home and Community Long-term care Agency Quality Assessment(HCLA-QA) program in 2010. This study aims to explore long-term care agencies' perceptions and attitudes toward HCLA-QA program, focused on the home-visit care agencies. Total 473 agencies completed the questionnaires(response rate 13.6%), using the e-mail and fax survey methods with high-capacity web-fax server of NHIC. On the results of this study, we found the agencies' different perceptions and attitudes on HCLA-QA program according to their quality ratings as QA results. Compared to the agencies with low quality ratings, the agencies with high quality ratings tend to have more time for preparation, better understandings about HCLA-QA program, more positive perceptions that quality indicators generally are valid, and more affirmative attitudes that the notifications of QA results are helpful for agencies. Our findings can be very useful for establishing strategies for improving the HCLA-QA program. The policy makers, the insurer, and the agencies need to consider the opinions of the agencies with high quality ratings as well as the ones with low quality ratings.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.66 no.2
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• pp.5-29
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• 2014

The purpose of this study is to interpret how the long-term care evaluation system implements in the actual service settings with institutional isomorphism and decoupling based on new-institutional theory. This study conducted in-depth interview with employees engaged in 7 long term care service facilities. Directed qualitative content analysis was used to analyze the data. As a result, unlike the intention of the long-term care evaluation system to improve the efficiency of the organization by market competition, it found that organizations forcibly adapted a evaluation system to rely on government's resources and it results in isomorphism phenomena which is similar between organizations. This results confirmed that the evaluation system has implemented in the direction of enhancing the government's role to standardize and institutionalize the long-term care service rather than improving the efficiency of the organization by market competition. This study also partially found the phenomenon of decoupling between organizational formal structure accompanied by isomorphism and real behaviors. These results suggest that it is required to improve government's evaluation indicators on the issue of inefficiency caused by dual structure of organizations. In addition, this study proposes that government's evaluation index which is reflected the characteristics of care service is necessary for operating.

• 한국노년학
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.371-380
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• 2011

This study was to address changes on hospital-based home care utilization after long-term care insurance(LTCI) was launched. National electronic data information(EDI) on hospital-based home care from Health Insurance Review Agency in 2007.7~2008.6(prior to LTCI) and in 2009(posterior to LTCI) was analyzed. After the launch of long-term care insurance, 40 hospital-based home health care agencies(HHCA) were diminished and regions not having any HHCA were increased from 53% to 59%. Hospital-based home care utilization was decreased in the elderly(clients 13.4%, visits 20.9%) as well as non-elderly(clients 3.5%, visits 3.9%). It is presumed that diminished HHCAs result in decreased accessibility to hospital-based home health care for non-elderly. The clients, visits, and reimbursed cost per agency were not changed. It is presumed that small agencies were closed already. The total reimbursed cost per agency in 2009 was 121,850,000 won. Results suggest that the government has to give support to open more HHCA to increase the accessibility for non-elderly. Also, hospital-based home care services utilization has to be monitoring regularly.

• 한국노년학
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.149-175
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• 2009

The purpose of this research is to analyze the overall problems at the moment of October 2008, and then to find the improvements of home-help services of the Long-Term Care Insurance(LTCI), which has been revealed many problems since it was released in July 2008. The research uses the literature survey which analyzes 2nd-hand materials studied by other people already, and survey research was executed from active social workers in the area of LTCI. Based on the policy analysis framework of Gilbert and Specht, all the data are analyzed in the scopes of client·benefit(service)·finance·transferring system. This research has found the problems in each scope of home-help services of the LTCI. Firstly, the client system has some problems in mismatching between registered and service clients, estimating client number, and judging service levels. Secondly, the service system reveals deficiency in professionality of social workers, service quality lowering by loose qualification criteria on workers, non-reasonable limitation of service time available, and the same fare system applied to visiting-help service in spite of different levels. Thirdly, in financing system, clients need to pay additional money to get extra services such as meal, hair cutting, bathing etc., due to government financial support stopped, some organizations have to reduce services and replace full-time workers to part-time ones, which makes the service quality worse. Lastly, in the transferring system, the management system for service quality is not well prepared. There are too much competion because of allowing too many home-help service organizations and care worker academies. The suggestions that this research has found to improve the policy are as follows. ① It is desirable to make the registered clients the service ones as many as possible in the long term perspective. ② The LTCI organization requires more workers and higher professionality. ③ Many elderly people who are not eligible now require connection system to be more served. ④ Management system and service manual for care worker are to be developed. ⑤ Laws related to the service contents and process should be modified, the proportion of client charge needs to adjust. ⑥ Home-help service organization licensed by the LTCI needs to be financially supported publicly. ⑦ Monitoring system to home-help service organization needs to be strengthened. ⑧ Evaluation tools to home-help service organization and workers is required. ⑨ Specification to open the home-help service organization needs to be more strict.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.591-599
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• 2017

With the introduction of long-term care insurance, the number of long-term care facilities and the elderly using it is increasing. Nevertheless, there was a lack of concern and research on elderly abuse and how to affect the life of the elderly in long-term care facilities. The study analyzed the data collected from 278 senior citizens of 44 long-term care facilities in two regions. The analysis was conducted to analyze the relationship among elderly abuse, service quality, service satisfaction and life satisfaction. An analysis showed that some of the elderly experienced elderly abuse, especially sexual abuse. The experience of abuse affect the perception of the service quality, service satisfaction and life satisfaction of the elderly. The elderly experienced abuse was undervalued in service quality, service satisfaction and life satisfaction. Based on these findings, the implications to prevent elderly abuse of long-term care facilities are suggested.

• 한국노년학
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.177-194
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• 2009

Korea government has launched long-term care insurance from 2008. However, one of the most important issues, whether or not providing cash benefit, is still unresolved. In this paper, in order to provide policy guidelines for the long-term care insurance, I attempt to estimate the Willingness-To-Accept (WTA) of the cash subsidy for informal care by using Double Bounded Dichotomous Choice method, a branch of Contingent Valuation Method (CVM). In doing so, I also estimated the determinants of the preference for cash benefit. Data were obtained from face-to-face survey interviews with 300 informal care-givers at three major general hospitals in Seoul, Korea. The questionnaire was constructed with two scenarios (mild/severe symptom). The results from logistic regression analyses and the estimation of WTA indicate that informal care-givers are willing to accept the cash benefit as low as 628 thousands won for mild fragile elderly and 1,072 thousands won for severe fragile elderly. The strength of this paper is that I estimated the WTA of the cash benefit by reflecting the changes in preferences of informal care-givers. The analytic results from the this paper suggest that the cash benefit in long-term care insurance is indispensible in achieving the goal of the long-term care system.

• Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.8-17
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• 2017

Globally, efforts are being made to develop and strengthen a palliative care policy to support a comprehensive healthcare system. Korea has implemented a hospice and palliative care (HPC) policy as part of a cancer policy under the 10 year plan to conquer cancer and a comprehensive measure for national cancer management. A legal ground for the HPC policy was laid by the Cancer Control Act passed in 2003. Currently in the process is legislation of a law on the decision for life-sustaining treatment for HPC and terminally-ill patients. The relevant law has expanded the policy-affected disease group from terminal cancer to cancer, human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and chronic liver disease/liver cirrhosis. Since 2015, the National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme reimburses for HPC with a combination of the daily fixed sum and the fee for service systems. By the provision type, the HPC is classified into hospitalization, consultation, and home-based treatment. Also in place is the system that designates, evaluates and supports facilities specializing in HPC, and such facilities are funded by the NHI fund and government subsidy. Also needed along with the legal system are consensus reached by people affected by the policy and more realistic fee levels for HPC. The public and private domains should also cooperate to set HPC standards, train professional caregivers, control quality and establish an evaluation system. A stable funding system should be prepared by utilizing the long-term care insurance fund and hospice care fund.

• 한국노년학
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.645-656
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to address the current status of hospital-based home care(HBHC). We analyzed the data on HBHC from national electronic data information of Health Insurance Review Agency. Beside, we surveyed 75 hospital-based home care agency. In 2006, 20,343 elderly(64.0% from all HBHC user) used 333,889 visits(76.8%from all visits). Medical diagnosis was composed of circulatory disease including cerebrovascular diseases 41.3%, endocrine system disease including Diabetes mellitus 10.4%, neoplasm 9.7%. Some of subjects used HBHC in excess of maximum covered 8 visits a month by National Health Insurance, decubitus 7.0%, the cancer 5.4%, the diabetes 2.5%, the hypertension 1.1%, and the stroke 0.9%. This results will contribute to expand the coverage of hospital-based home care by National Health Insurance. There was distribution difference in medical diagnosis and nursing intervention between HBHC and Public health center-based home care(PBHC) subjects. Therefore, HBHC subjects had more severe medical diagnosis, and were intervened more injections, examinations, than PBHC subjects. These differences must be considered to set up functional role among the three types of home visit care.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.39
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• pp.350-373
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• 1999

The patient population of U. S. state mental hospitals has changed drastically since the 1960s, when the deintstitutionalization movement began. This paper is designed to look at what happened to the number of inpatients of state hospitals in California during the last 150 years and, from this, to explore implications for the future of the mental health system in Korea, especially for the viability of mental hospitals. The data had been collected by field research(visits to state hospitals and State Department of Mental Health, and interviews with mental health administrators) and accessing statistical publications and various reports. Since the first state hospital opened in 1851 the statewide inpatient population of individuals who were mentally disabled has grown and peaked at 37,489 in 1959. The number of patients in state hospitals, however, began declining in the early 1960s and was reduced to 10,874 by 1971, and to 4,973 by 1986. As of 1997, there were only 4, 263 inpatients remaining in the state hospital system. This dramatic decrease slowed down somewhat in 1980s and 1990s, but this trend seems irreversible except for the inpatients referred by the court. Now the beds in state hospitals are filled with more and more forensic patients, which constitutes nearly 70% of the total inpatient population. Based on these findings, it is well expected that the number of inpatients of mental hospitals in Korea will also be reduced in a significant way as the community-based mental health care system is gradually replacing the traditional one. Mental hospitals need to introduce more diversified programs for the care of the mentally ill, and concurrently more vigorous aftercare programs are required in the community.