• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.43 no.6
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• pp.455-458
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• 2010

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was signed into law on March 23, 2010 and will fundamentally alter health care in the United States for years to come. The US is currently one of the only industrialized countries without universal health insurance. The new law expands existing public insurance for the poor. It also provides financial credits to low income individuals and some small businesses to purchase health insurance. By government estimates, the law will bring insurance to 30 million people. The law also provides for a significant new investment in prevention and wellness. It appropriates an unprecedented $15 billion in a prevention and public health fund, to be disbursed over 10 years, as well as creates a national prevention council to oversee the government's prevention efforts. This paper discusses 3 major prevention provisions in the legislation: 1) the waiving of cost-sharing for clinical preventive services, 2) new funding for community preventive services, and 3) new funding for workplace wellness programs. The paper examines the scientific evidence behind these provisions as well as provides examples of some model programs. Taken together, these provisions represent a significant advancement for prevention in the US health care system, including a shift towards healthier environments. However, in this turbulent economic and political environment, there is a real threat that much of the law, including the prevention provisions, will not receive adequate funding.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.360-368
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• 2018

Background: The proportion of pharmaceutical expenditure out of total health-care expenditure in South Korea is high. In 2016, 25.7% of national health insurance (NHI) spending was for pharmaceuticals. Given the increasing demands for the access to newly introduced medicines and following increase in pharmaceutical spending, the management of NHI pharmaceutical expenditure is becoming more difficult. Methods: This study analyzed the data claimed to NHI for pharmaceutical reimbursement from 2010 to 2016. Results: The policy implications with respect to the trends and problems in spending by drug groups were elicited. First, the proportion of off-patent drugs spending which were treated to chronic disease was much higher than anti-cancer drug spending. Second, the spending to the newly introduced high-costed medicine increased, however, current price-reduction mechanism was not sufficient to manage their expenditure efficiently. Conclusion: Our system seems to need several revisions to improve the efficiency of pharmaceutical expenditure and to cope with high-costed medicines. This study suggested that the prices of off-patent drugs need to be regularly readjusted and the Price-Volume Agreement System should be operated more flexibly as well.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.130-137
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• 2019

The fee-for-service system is used as the main payment system for health care providers in Korea. It has been argued that it can't reflect differences in the medical practice costs across regions because the fee schedule is calculated based on the average cost. So, some researchers and providers have disputed that there is need for adopting geographic practice cost index (GPCI) used in the United States for the Medicare program for the elderly to the fee-for-service payment system. This study performed to identify whether the difference in the practice costs among regions exists or not and to examine the feasibility of applying GPCI to Korea payment system. For this purpose, we calculated modified-GPCI and examined considerations to introduce GPCI in Korea. First we identified available data to calculate GPCI. Second, we made applicable GPCI equations to Korea payment system and computed it based on four types of regions (metropolitan, urban, suburban, and rural). We also categorize the regions based on the availability of the medical resources and the capability of utilizing them. As a result, we found that there wasn't any significant difference in the GPCI by regional types in general, but the indices of rural areas (0.91-0.98) was relatively low compared to the indices of other regions (0.96-1.07). Considering the need to use GPCI floor, the pros and cons of using GPCI, and the concern of the regional imbalance of resources, the introduction of GPCI needs to be carefully considered.

• Journal of Korean Public Health Nursing
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.21-44
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• 1988

In Korea, fee-for service reimbursement has been adopted from the begining of medical insurance system in 1977, and the importance of the relative value unit is currently being investigated. The purpose of this study was to find out the level of propriety of the difference in the fees for different surgical services, and the appropriateness of the classification of the insurance fee schedule. For the purpose of this study, specific subjects and the procedural methodology is shown as follows: 1. The propriety of the Relative Price System(RPS). 1) Choice of sample operations. In this study, sample operations were selected and classified by specialists in general surgery, and the number of items they classified were 32. For the same group of operations the Insurance Fee Schedule(IFS) classified the operations into 24 separate items. In order to investigate the propriety of the RPS, one of the purpose of this study, was to examine the 24 items classified by the IFS. 2) Evaluation of the complexity of surgery. The data used in this study was collected The data used in this study was collected from 94 specialists in general surgery by mail survey from November I to 15, 1986. Several independent variables (age, location, number of bed, university hospital, whether the medical institution adopt residents or not) were also investigated for analysis of the characteristics of surgical complexity. 3) Complexity and time calculations. Time data was collected from the records of the Seoul National University' Hospital, and the cost per operation was calculated through cost finding methods. 4) Analysis of the propriety of the Relative Price System of the Insurance Fee Schedule. The Relative Price System of the sample operation was regressed on the cost, time, comlexity relative ,value system (RVS) separately. The coefficient of determination indicates the degree of variation in the RPS of the Insurance Fee Schedule explained by the cost, time, complexity RVS separately. 2. The appropriateness of the classification of the Insurance Fee Schedule. 1) Choice of sample operations. The items which differed between the classification of the specialist and the classification of medical, Insurance Fee Schedule were chosen. 2) Comparisons of cost, time and complexity between the items were done to evaluate which classification was more appropriate. The findings of the study can be summarized as follows: 1. The coefficient of determination of the regression of the RPS on-cost RVS was 0.58, on time RVS was 0.65, and on complexity RVS was 0.72. This means that the RPS of Insurance Fee Schedule is improper with respect to the cost, time, complexity separately. Thus this indicates that RPS must be re-shaped according to the standard element. In this study, the correlation coefficients of cost, time, complexity Relative Value System were very high, and this suggests that RPS could be reshaped I according to anyone standard element. Considering of measurement, time was thought to be the most I appropriate. 2. The classifications of specialist and of the Insurance Fee Schedule were compared with respect to cost, time, and complexity separately. For complexity, ANOVA was done and the others were compared to the different values of different classifications. The result was that the classification of specialist was more reasonable and that the classification of Insurance Fee Schedule grouped inappropriately several into one price unit.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.17-40
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• 2006

With the prospect of rapidly growing health insurance expenditures, particularly spending for ambulatory care, the introduction of a case-based payment method is discussed as an alternative to the current fee-for-service based method. A system to measure case mixes of providers is a core component of such payment systems. The objective of this study were to develop a classification system for ambulatory care, Korean Ambulatory Patient Group (KAPG) based on the U.S. APG version 2.0 and to evaluate the classification accuracy of the system. A database of 64,258,386 records was constructed from insurance claims submitted to the Health Insurance Review Agency (HIRA) during three months from August 2002. A total of 41,347,307 records with a single visit was used for the development and 7% random sample of the database was used for the evaluation. Additional groups were defined to include both physician and hospital fees in the classification, age splits were added to classify the entire population as well as the population older than 65, and the definition of medical groups used by the HIRA was adopted. The variance reduction in charges achieved by KAPGs was computed to evaluate the accuracy of classification. A total of 474 KAPGs was defined compare to 290 groups in the U.S. APG. The variance reduction for charges of all visits ranged from 20% to 37% depending on the type of provider, and ranged from 22% to 42% for non-outliers, that were better than those achieved by the system currently used by the .HIRA for its internal review purpose. Although further study is required to improve the classification for complicated care in larger hospitals, the results indicated that KAPGs could be used for better management of costs for ambulatory care.

• The Journal of the Korean dental association
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• v.48 no.6
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• pp.459-468
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• 2010

International Classification of Disease (ICD-10) is widely used as a crucial reference not only in the medical diagnosis of diseases but also within the health insurance system. It makes possible for medical personnel to make decisions systematically and for the people working in the health insurance or public health industries to better understand medical issues. However, this classification is often not enough or acceptable in a clinical setting. Many countries amend in their own way to make it more appropriate for their people. Korean Classification of Disease (KCD-5) was made by adding a 5 digit code for some diseases to clarify the conditions of the patients. The authors found problems of KCD-5 in temporomandibular disorders and several related medical problems. Medical treatment for these problems had not been covered even by public health insurance until 2000 in Korea. For the last decade, private insurance companies have introduced new items for reimbursement of the treatment fees the patients actually pay. The authors assumed that many patients with these medical problems encountered difficulties in the reimbursement from private insurance companies because KCD-5 did not classify these medical conditions appropriately. An overview of KCD-5 and suggestions for improvement are introduced in this study.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.333-342
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• 2016

Background: The use of therapeutic materials based on new health technology has increased in recent years in the field of medicine, raising concerns for medical practitioners regarding increased spending on the new therapeutic materials amid the rapid population ageing and increase of chronic diseases in Korea. While therapeutic materials have significant importance in the health care system, they have not been given appropriate attention in the academic world of Korea. The purpose of this study is to identify factors that affect the growth of expenditure on therapeutic materials and to derive implications for an effective management considering the diversity of therapeutic materials. Methods: Using the claims data of the National Health Insurance Services, specific utilization patterns of groups of therapeutic materials in the middle classification level of Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service from 2007 to 2014 were analyzed. Four categories (J5083: drug eluting coronary stent, D0302: nonmetallic anchor, K6014: gauze, K6023: gauze) that exhibit unique patterns with respect to price and volume were selected. Then, decomposition analysis was performed to identify the largest contributor to the spending growth by dividing the products into existing, new, and abandoned products for the period between 2010 and 2013. Results: The effect of new products had larger impact on spending growth than the effect of core items in drug eluting coronary stent (J5083) and nonmetallic anchor (D0302). In addition, existing products in general included items priced relatively lower when compared with another item manufactured by the same company. In the gauze category, however, existing products had the largest impact on expenditure and the effect of volume was greater than that in other categories. Conclusion: This study provides evidence that appropriate management measures classified by the characteristics of therapeutic materials are required for therapeutic materials pricing and reassessment in Korea.

• The Journal of the Korean life insurance medical association
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.3-16
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• 1985

Necessity of life insurance is stronger for people who feel some anxiety of their health. However, in fact, it is not permitted for them to get a contract, because life insurance stands on the mutual benefit system. Life insurance must be impartial to all applicants. However, it is very reasonable that an applicant, who has high medical impairment like heart infarction or cancer, is rejected, to have a contract by underwriting decision. On the other hand, if his medical impairment is not so severe, we might accept his application by giving some restriction. Numericalratingsystem by hunter-rogers gave us one of solutions to this problem. We can keep impartiality by using more restrictive decision, in order that we demand additional payment to the impairment applicant according to his mortality. We call this system as substandard life insurance. In this system we need detail information about impairments of applicants in order to decide the condition of substandard risks. Therefore, medical examiners are required to have high diagnostic technique.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.110-143
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• 1996

The purpose of this study is to assess the extent of inequality in health outcomes and the distribution of health services according to health need under National Health Insurance System in Korea. For the empirical analysis, data were collected through an interview survey during one month of October, 1994. Interview were conducted with a total of 10, 875 of the employees and the self-employed selected through cluster, systematic sampling. The major findings of this research are as follows: 1. The analysis of the differentials in morbidity rates by socio-economic group showed that health inequality in the pro-higher groups existed in all self-reported morbidity indicators. 2. The findings of the conventional use measures showed that the lower socio-economic groups had more ambulatory and inpatient services than the higher groups. In contrast to the level of the medical care utilization, however, the higher socio-economic groups were more likely to use the high-quality source of care in terms of their treatment place compared to the lower groups. 3. By using the need-based use measures, the results were different from each use-disability ration indicator. Using the use-disability ration measured by physician visits per 100 restricted-activity days in the population, it was found that there was no evidence favoring the higher socio-economic groups. In contrast, the use-disability ration based on physician visits per a chronic patient in one year displayed that there was remarkable relative difference by income group as well as the evidence of the pro-higher income groups. 4. The results of logistic regression analysis and two-stage estimation method indicated that although the utilization is significantly affected by type and duration of insurance coverage, the use or nonuse of service and the volume of physician care consumed is determined by health need and demographic characteristics rater than economic status. In sum, these findings suggest that physician service is equitably distributed according to health need under national health insurance system in Korea. As there were some evidences of inequality including the differential in physician visits of chronic patients by income group, however, the government should strengthen the activities to guarantee the equity of health services utilization.

• Journal of Korean Public Health Nursing
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.403-411
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• 2015

Due to lack of an information system regarding the status of using home-visit nursing (HVN), it has barriers of providing improvement of the HVN for management of elderly health care in Korea. The twofold aims of the current review are to expose the existing agendas for HVN and to suggest the political implications for HVN of Korea based on the transition process and revised HVN system of Japan. This review suggests that an information evaluation system has to precede for HVN services in detail. And, the service provided per manpower should be assessed by separating the code of manpower (registered nurse, nurse aide, dental hygienist) as well as securing detailed and precise information on the HVN services. The other suggestion, development of a community-based home health care nursing model in order to provide necessary services for long-term health insurance beneficiaries. In addition, a master plan for health care for elderly should be established at the national level in order to establish an effective home health nursing delivery system.