• Health Policy and Management
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.379-381
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• 2019

Korea's healthcare is in great danger of sustainability. In 2020, the baby boomer will begin to be older, and there is no promise that the total fertility rate of 1.0 or less will rebound, and Korea's economic growth rate is predicted to be less than 2%. Together with these phenomena, Plan for Benefit Expansion in Nation Health Insurance (Moon Jae-in Care) will seriously threaten the sustainability of health insurance finance. In addition, health care in Korea has many problems: excessive medical utilization, rapidly increasing elderly medical costs, concentrating patients into big hospitals, low healthcare personnel but many healthcare facilities and equipment, bad quality of primary and mental care, and fast-growing health expenditure. For sustainability, healthcare of Korea should be reformed. The direction of the reform is people-centered and integrated healthcare in the community which is composed of empowering and engaging people, strengthening governance and accountability, reorienting the model of care, coordinating services, and creating an enabling environment.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.345-346
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• 2022

2022 was a time when the global healthcare system was challenged and has grown in response to the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. In addition, various issues accumulated in the process of quantitative growth have emerged in the Korean healthcare system. For instance, problems of sustainability in health insurance finances and removing bubbles from excessive medical utilization should be urgently resolved as tasks that occurred in the process of expanding the coverage of the health insurance system. The deficit of applicants for the pediatrician residency program suggests that expanding health insurance coverage alone has limitations in providing essential medical services. There is a need to incentivize doctors who provide essential medical care services. In 2023, we hope that efforts to enhance and internally reinforce the healthcare system will be concentrated.

• Journal of The Korea Institute of Healthcare Architecture
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.49-58
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• 2008

Considering the rapid growth of elderly population and the increase of medical demand for aged, many of geriatric hospitals are needed in Korea. On the other hand, supplies of hospitals for acute care are considered to be excessive. So many of small and medium hospitals facing management problems have been converged to geriatric hospitals. These attempts are considered resonable for efficient utilization of health care resources in Korea. This paper aims to identify the concept of geriatric hospital and to analyze the problems and then to seek the alternatives for architectural planning on the basis of surveying the geriatric hospitals converged from hospitals for acute care.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.15 no.7
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• pp.259-269
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• 2017

This study analyzed medical aid case management effects based on the number of access by visits, phone calls, letters, internal investigation, resource links, and requests, in medical aid case management business that is carried out to improve the quality of life of medical care beneficiaries and reduce financial cost. Secondary analysis study using data of 564 high-risk group in the medical aid case management and their healthcare utilization data. Letters had positive correlations with the scores of all case management domains. The higher visits was, the lower the score of self-health care ability was, and the higher the number of phone calls was, the higher the score for reasonable medical use was. While there was no significant difference in medical cost according to aid management by interventions, the higher visits and resource links were, the lower the subjects' total number of payment days was. There is a difference in the various areas of the quality of health -related life and medical use depending on case management by intervention method and its number. It is necessary to carry out the efficient number of access to case management by intervention method.

• Korean Journal of Community Nutrition
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.341-352
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• 2012

It is well established that excessive sodium intake is related to a higher incidence of chronic diseases such as hypertension, stroke, coronary heart disease, cardiovascular disease and gastric cancer. Although the upper limit of the current sodium intake guideline by WHO is set at 2,000 mg/day for adults, sodium intake of Koreans is well over 4,700 mg/capita/day implying an urgent need to develop and implement sodium intake reduction policy at the national level. This study investigated the cost-effectiveness of the sodium intake reduction policy, for the first time, in Korea. Analyses were performed using most recent and representative data on national health insurance statistics, healthcare utilization, employment information, disease morbidity/mortality, etc. The socioeconomic benefits of the policy, resulting from reduced morbidity of those relevant diseases, included lower medical expenditures, transportation costs, caregiver cost for inpatients and income losses. The socioeconomic benefits from diminished mortality included reductions in earning losses and welfare losses caused by early deaths. It is estimated that the amount of total benefits of reducing sodium intake from 4.7 g to 3.0 g is 12.6 trillion Korean Won; and the size of its cost is 149 billion Won. Assuming that the effect of sodium intake reduction would become gradually evident over a 5-year period, the implied rate of average return to the sodium reduction policy is 7,790% for the following 25 years, suggesting a very high cost-effectiveness. Accordingly, development and implementation of a mid-to-long term plan for a consistent sodium intake reduction policy is extremely beneficial and well warranted.