• Health Policy and Management
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.67-85
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• 2008

This study evaluated the specialization status of Korean hospitals by applying index measures that were developed to determine how hospitals are specialized. In addition, multivariate regression analysis was applied to assess how the measures responded to the internal and external factors of hospitals. National Health Insurance claims for 2004 were used to calculate the information theory index, internal Herfindahl index, number of distinct diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) treated, and percent of the five most common DRGs. Data from the Ministry of Health and Welfare and Korean Hospital Association were used to determine the size, ownership, teaching status, organization type, and location of the hospitals. The four indexes analyzed showed that there were significant differences in the specialization status of providers, depending on the provider size, organization type, and location. Hospitals that were smaller and located in metropolitan areas tended to provide specialized services; this is considered to constitute a competitive strategy for hospitals. It is expected that specialized hospitals will increase given the current market structure. Therefore, policy makers will need an index for measuring how hospital services are specialized. Information from such an index could provide a picture of how hospital services are mixed and change over time.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.34-57
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• 2004

Universal health insurance normally requires a basic benefit package, whose design intersects with almost all other aspects of the health insurance debate. Despite its central importance, basic benefit package has not received the analysis it deserves in Korea. The issue of how to decide which health services should be delivered and to whom has been a matter for consistent policy debate. Many industrialized countries observed in this study have been dealing explicitly or implicitly with the basic benefit package. The methods vary from having a specific positive list of services (Bismarkian countries) to the use of guidelines (Beveridgian countries). The purpose of this paper is to form the underlying principles and process for determining what is included or left out by getting accurate and representative responses from health-related personnel. Mail survey is used. Economic burden for treatment, seriousness of disease and urgency of treatment are ranked at the first three priorities. Services that had been suspended because of financial crisis in health insurance scheme in 2001 were selected as items which should firstly be expanded into coverage. Diagnostic test against heart disease and vaccination were also selected as items which should additionally belong to the list of covered services.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.11-30
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• 2015

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to lay groundwork for future research on the outcomes of national quality awards for secondary-care healthcare organizations. Methods: For this study, a secondary-care hospital was selected through a convenience sampling method and all of its organizational members participated in complete enumeration survey using 109 survey questions derived from the MBNQA criteria for healthcare through structural equation modeling (SEM) Results: As a result, Leadership was shown to drive Foundation and Direction, which affect System that creates Results with 12 hypotheses supported out of 18 hypotheses established. Conclusion: The findings of this study will provide valuable implications to the top management of secondary-care hospitals for self-examining quality management and promoting sustainable competitiveness.

• Journal of Convergence Society for SMB
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.1-6
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• 2015

Recently the disease by eating of the modern prevention, management, and trends in the u-healthcare service that provides healthcare services including health promotion is changing rapidly. However, u-healthcare service is a healthcare information that provides users of the disease can not be analyzed even if the service is stored or not stored in the management server status is giving the inconvenience caused to users of the health services. In this paper, we propose a management method of health care services and a big data formation information that provides users of the disease to facilitate the users of health care services through the use magazine big data information regardless of time and place. The proposed method has the user's bio-information and the measured health information and transmits data through a wired or wireless communication to the medical institution and the user's health information data formation by the big user of the analysis of the health information and the disease of the user feedback to the user.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.37-48
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• 2020

This research proposes how to enhance low customer satisfaction with health screening services caused by procedural complexity and limits of health screening. The purpose of this study is to identify sub-components of the service quality provided by general health examination centers. This is a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews of providers and consumers of medical services. The data were primarily analyzed by affinity diagram, and the data were sorted and analyzed according to the criteria suggested by Donabedian's four components. Four types of quality factors and the health screening service quality components of 39 subordinate items were assessed. Components related to the use of IT facilities comprise a significant amount of the physical factors, and there are high demands for IT facilities among customers.

• Journal of Family Resource Management and Policy Review
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.43-60
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• 2016

The purpose of this study was to investigate what life safety services the elderly living alone in rural areas need and to propose the life safety services that they actually need. The research subjects were 1,000 people aged 65 years and over living in the rural areas of Korea. Among the total 1,000 respondents, 283 elderly people who did not live together with their married children were included in this study. Data were analyzed through frequency analysis, descriptive statistics, and multiple regression analysis. The results of this study were as follows. First, the needs of health care services and vehicle support services (when the elderly went to the hospital or walked out) were high. These were services related to health, which means that the health of the elderly is not good and that they are interested in health. Of course, it is important to treat the disease. However, it is more important to prevent disease and maintain health. An expansion of these services is urgently needed. Second, the need for life safety services was affected by the frequency of contact with neighbors, uncomfortable housing, exercise, the frequency of contact with children, gas accidents, and nutrition variables. Through this analysis, we propose to include the housing improvement service, nutrition improvement services, and expanding social relations services in the life safety services.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.24 no.4 s.36
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• pp.485-495
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• 1991

This study examined the effects of referral requirements for insurance patients which have been enforced since July 1, 1989 when medical insurance coverage was extended to the whole population except beneficiaries of medical assistance program. The requirements are mainly aimed at discouraging the use of tertiary care hospitals by imposing restrictions on the patient's choice of a medical service facility. The expectation is that such change in the pattern of medical care utilization would produce several desirable effects including increased efficiency in patient care and balanced development of various types of medical service facilities. In this study, these effects were assessed by the change in the number of out-patient visits and bed-days per illness episode and the share of each type of facility in the volume of services and the amount of expenditures after the implementation of the new referral system. The data for analysis were obtained from the claims to the insurance for government and school employees. The sample was drawn from the claims for the patients treated during the first six months of 1989, prior to the enforcement of referral requirements, and those of the patients treated during the first six months of 1990, after the enforcement. The 1989 sample included 299,824 claims (3.6% of total) and the 1990 sample included 332,131 (3.7% of total). The data were processed to make the unit of analysis an illness episode instead of an insurance claim. The facilities and types of care utilized for a given illness episode are defined to make up the pathway of medical care utilization. This pathway was conceived of as a Markov Chain process for further analysis. The conclusion emerged from the analysis is that the enforcement of referral requirements resulted in less use of tertiary care hospitals, and thereby decreased the volume of services and the amount of insurance expenses per illness episode. However, there are a few points that have to be taken into account in relation to the conclusion. The new referral system is likely to increase the use of medical services not covered by insurance, so that its impact on national health expenditures would be different from that on insurance expenditures. The extension of insurance coverage must have inereased patient load for all types of medical service organizations, and this increase may be partly responsible for producing the effects attributed to the new referral system. For example, excessive patient load for tertiary care hospitals may lead to the transfer of their patients to other types of facilities. Another point is that the data for this study correspond to very early phase of the new system. But both patients and medical care providers would adapt themselves to the new system to avoid or overcome its disadvantages for them, so as that its effects could change over time. Therefore, it is still necessary to closely monitor the impact of the referral requirements.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.112-130
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• 1992

Patient care services are provided to individual patients in response to their health needs produced by illnesses or injuries. The services are often addressed to very serious conditions, and also they constitute the most expensive component of health care services. Therefore, the importance of quality is emphasized, but there are many indications that patient care quality is far from a satisfactory state in most of the countries. Based upon this observation, it is attempted to examine obstacles and approaches to quality improvement in patient care services. In doing so, following Taguchi's(1986) definition of product quality, quality of patient care services is conceived of as better when the less is the sociental loss attributalbe to variability of intended function and harmful side effects they emhibit after being delivered. Some distinguishing features of medical care sector pose difficulties in implementing effective quality improvement programs in patient care services. Nevertheless, newly proposed method of quality management, based on industrial quality management approach, seems to have a great deal of potential to effectively cope with such difficulties. This method, unlike the traditional approach to quality assurance, focuses on total organisational processes, not individuals, as the obproach to quality assurance, focuses on total organizational processes, not individuals, as the objects of quality improvement; variation, not comparison with standards, in quality measurement; and continuous improvement, not removing only bad quality care, as an ideal. Prerequisite to a successful use of any quality mangement method is motivating providers to improve quality. Conceivable approaches for such motivation are self-regulation, external controls and promotion of competition. Since these approaches are not mutually exclusive, they may be employed in an appropriate combination. In Korea, medical care providers are now functioning under the circumstances where they have little reason for making efforts to improve quality of their services. Once these circumstantial conditions are changed to exert pressures on providers to improve quality, the use of adequate quality management method becomes an issue. In this connection, much attention shoould be directed to the newly proposed method described above. In all these efforts for improving quality of patient care services, health insurance would be able to play a pivotal role. Poviders of medical care, buth indiciduals and organizations, are usually very responsive to the measures that affect their financing, and thus health insurance can be a strong instrument for motivationg providers to improve quality. Also, the insurance continuously acquires data on patient care, which could be processed to produce information required to effective quality control.

• Journal of Korean Public Health Nursing
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.430-447
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• 2021

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to analyze the role and tasks of nurses who were working for the elderly in the visiting health services at the public health centers. Methods: Literature reviews, two rounds of meetings with 5 experts and a two-round Delphi technique with 15 experts were performed in this study. Results: The nurses' role and job analysis revealed 5 roles, 16 duties and, 71 tasks. The nurses' roles, including discovery and registration of households/groups in visiting health service in the community, case manager, administrative management, program planning, operation and evaluation, and development of job competency. Sixteen duties included client registration and management, need assessment and plan establishment, education, consultation and support, seasonal health care, prevention and monitoring of infectious diseases, basic nursing care, chronic disease management, linkage and utilization of resources, team cooperation and coordination, home environment management, monitoring and support for intervention outcomes, evaluation, administrative management, program planning, operation and evaluation, development of professional competency and, adoption of fourth industrial revolution technology. Conclusions: Based on the results, the government should provide sufficient nursing personnel to provide universal preventive health services for the elderly and a job training program to perform these roles well.

• Korean Journal of Occupational Health Nursing
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• v.4
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• pp.5-29
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• 1995

Occupational health services in Korea have been operated as dual types : one is operated by occupational health care manager and the other is health care agency without their own personnel. The performance of occupational health service should be different due to the variety of characteristics of health care manager and workplace, qualification of health care manager. This study is to analyze performance of occupational health care services with a particular consideration of job performance shape and efficiency, based on comparing those two types of health care management to show on the basic data for the settlement of more qualitative health care management system at workplace. For this study, total 391 places in Seoul and Inchon city area ; 154 places (39.4%) managed by designated health care manager and 237 places (60.6%) by the agency with their commission are selected as research samples. Tools for data collection are questionnares that have been investigated during the period of 20 September 1993-20 December 1993. Those data are compared with percentiles, mean, standard deviation and B/C ratio using SPSS PC program. Conclusions observed from the tests and each comparison could be summerized as follows : 1. Occupational health care have been accomplished at workplaces with designated people than with agencies people, and coverage rate of the occupational health care services has differences, due to management types. The reason of these results is due to visit only one or two times monthly by the agencies, while their own health care manager obsess, at the workplaces all the times. 2. Most of the expense for environmental control of all health care services expenditures shows that there is almost no fundamental improvement because more expenses are needed for procuring personal protective equipment and measuring work environment instead of environmental improvement. 3. It is investigated how much the cost of occupational health care services needs per worker, and calculated how much the cost needs per service hour per worker. The results from this show that the cost of occupational health services at workplaces with their own managers used less than the cost of health care agencies, eventually the former gives better services with less cost than the latter. 4. Benefit/Cost ratio is also produced by total benefit/total cost. The result from the above way reads 4.57 as a whole, while their own manager having workplaces reads 4.82 and the agencies do l.56. Even if their own manager performing workplaces spent more cost, this system produces more benefit than the agencies management. 5. The B/C ratio for medical organization such as local clinic, health care center and pharmacy shows more than or equal to at the workplaces controlled by the agencies. It is inferred that benefit would be much less than the cost used, with so being inefficient. 6. It is assumed that the efficiency ratio of health education is equal to reduction rate of workers medical organization visit. Estimated reduction rate 5%, 10%, 15%, show that the efficiency ratio of health education have an effect on producing benefits. It is estimated that more benefit can be produced if more qualitative education will be provided for enhancing health care efficiency. 7. Results of this study cannot be generalized because there are large scale of deviation in case of workplaces with less than 300 full time workers, but B/C ratio reads 2.69 as a whole and 3.25 at workplaces with their own health care manager are higher than 1.63 at the workplaces manged by the agencies. Finally, all the benefit concerning health care services could not be quantified, measured and shown on the value of money. This is a reason that a considerable part of benefits are so underestimated. This is also thought that measurement tools should be developed for measuring benefits of health care services with a comprehensive quantification. in the future. It is also expected that efficiency of occupational health care services should be investigated using cost-effectiveness analysis.