• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.45-55
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• 2015

While the influence of healthcare accreditation system to the quality improvement of hospitals has more increased, regarding the preparation costs for healthcare accreditation, it has never been empirically studied about the costs that are actually invested by hospitals. This study is going to determine the difficulties in the preparation process of accreditation and details of accreditation preparation costs for hospitals that participated in the healthcare accreditation system and acquired accreditation. The survey was performed in a self-reported form from February 28 to March 21 2014 for 189 acute hospitals accredited as a hospital from 2011 to February 2014. Of all questionaries of survey participants, 98 were recovered; the response rate was 51.9%. A total of 40 questionnaires were used except for 58 containing insincere answers. Main findings are followings: Firstly, findings showed that advanced general hospitals spent the most statistically significantly highest in terms of equipments and total costs among cost items for accreditation preparation. When accreditation preparation costs items were classified according to classification of hospitals, advanced general hospitals spent the most statistically significantly highest in the equipments and total costs. Also in terms of regional, Gyeonggi, Incheon regions were found to spend statistically significantly higher costs in the equipments costs. Secondly, as a result of the survey in the distribution of the total accreditation preparation costs, advanced general hospitals have disbursed the most out of all. However, the result in hospitals does not show significant difference to the expense of advanced general hospitals and that especially other regional hospitals spent higher costs. As such, all hospitals are under a heavy burden of higher costs on accreditation preparation, especially hospitals. The build-up of infrastructures by hospitals through an accreditation system consequently led to a higher initial investment; if the accreditation system is effective in improving the quality of health care and patient safety, appropriate responses are needed. In other words, financial support for investment costs needs to be given to allow hospitals to actively participate in the accreditation system.

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.307-322
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• 2009

More than 80% of Japanese still want to face death at home, but only 10% of them can have his/her last moments of life at home. On the other hand, the end-of-life care has been a big issue in both ethical and economic aspect because of euthanasia and healthcare costs. It is generally known that the end-of-life care spends much more than the care for nonterminal years. This study approaches the key for the end-of-life care and suggests a desirable solution.

• Proceedings of the CALSEC Conference
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• 2005.03a
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• pp.125-129
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• 2005

The recent push for healthcare reform has caused healthcare organizations to focus on ways to streamlined processes in order to secure high quality care as well as reducing costs. Healthcare enterprises involve complex processes that span diverse groups and organizations. These processes involve clinical and administrative tasks, large quantities of data, and large number of patients and personnel. We propose the mobile-based workflow system of passable communication as an important factor in the B2B healthcare. Based on the above proposal the workflow system of business process was designed and implemented on the basis of Java, UML and XPDL.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.85 no.1
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• pp.11-17
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• 2022

Background: In asthma, consistent control of chronic airway inflammation is crucial, and the use of asthma-controller medication has been emphasized. Our purpose in this study is to compare the incidence of acute exacerbation and healthcare costs related to the use of asthma-controller medication. Methods: By using data collected by the National Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service, we compared one-year clinical outcomes and medical costs from July 2014 to June 2015 (follow-up period) between two groups of patients with asthma who received different prescriptions for recommended asthma-controller medication (inhaled corticosteroids or leukotriene receptor antagonists) at least once from July 2013 to June 2014 (assessment period). Results: There were 51,757 patients who satisfied our inclusion criteria. Among them, 13,702 patients (26.5%) were prescribed a recommended asthma-controller medication during the assessment period. In patients using a recommended asthma-controller medication, the frequency of acute exacerbations decreased in the follow-up period, from 2.7% to 1.1%. The total medical costs of the controller group decreased during the follow-up period compared to the assessment period, from $3,772,692 to $1,985,475. Only 50.9% of patients in the controller group used healthcare services in the follow-up period, and the use of asthma-controller medication decreased in the follow-up period. Conclusion: Overall, patients using a recommended asthma-controller medication showed decreased acute exacerbation and reduced total healthcare cost by half.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.44-60
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• 2011

Background : Surgical site infection(SSI) is one of the important nosocomial infections with pneumonia, urinary tract infection. SSI increases mortality, morbidity, length of stay, and costs for postoperative patients. The purpose of this study was to estimate length of stay(LOS) and health care costs from SSI using the large observational data. The ultimate objective was to show the effect of prevention of SSI. Method : This study used antibiotic prophylaxis evaluation data and claims data of the HIRA(Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service). The study population included 18,361 patients who underwent gastric surgery, endoscopic cholecystectomy, colon surgery, hysterectomy, cesarean section in nationwide hospitals from August to October 2007. SSI group and non-SSI group were matched according to propensity score resulted from logistic regression. The paired t-test was used to compare the difference of the LOS and health care costs between SSI group and non-SSI group. Results : The 598 cases of SSI were detected of total subjects, and the crude SSI rate was 3.3%. For each surgery, SSI rates were 5.5% for gastric surgery, 4.7% for cholecystectomy, 6.6% for colon surgery, 2.6% for hysterectomy, and 1.6% for cesarean section. The 596 cases of SSI and the 596 cases of non-SSI were matched by propensity score. The LOS of SSI group was longer than that of non-SSI group, and the difference was statistically significant. Health care costs of SSI group was more than that of non-SSI group which was significant. Conclusions : SSI increased apparently the LOS and healthcare costs. The economic loss might affect the cost of national healthcare as well as patients and hospitals. This study provided the evidence that the healthcare expenditure could be reduced by preventing SSI.

• Human Ecology Research
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• v.58 no.4
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• pp.613-633
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• 2020

This study identifies consumers' perceived benefits and costs when using Samsung Health (a healthcare app) based on consumer reviews from Google Play Store's app and social media discourse. We examine the differences in the benefits and the costs of Samsung Health using these two sources of data. We conducted text frequency analysis, clustering analysis, and semantic network analysis using R programming. The major findings are as follows. First, consumers experience benefits and costs on several functions of the app, such as step counting, device interlocking, information acquisition, and competition with global consumers. Second, the results of semantic network analysis showed that there were eight benefit factors and three cost factors. We also found that the three costs correspond to the benefits, indicating that some consumers gained benefits from certain functions while others gained costs from the same functions. Third, the comparison between consumer app review and social media discourse showed that the former is appropriate to assess the performance of app functions, while the latter is appropriate to examine how the app is used in daily life and how consumers feel about it. The current study suggests managerial implications to healthcare app service providers regarding what they should strengthen and improve to enhance consumers' satisfaction. It also suggests some implications from the two media, which can be mutually complementary, for researchers who study consumer opinions.

• 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.24 no.3
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• pp.219-227
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• 2014

Background: Current trends in Korea population aging with advances in public health and clinical medicine foretell rises in the prevalence of not only chronic diseases but also patients with multimorbidity. One important aspect in analyzing multimorbidity is to define the list of chronic diseases included when calculating multimorbidity index. The objective of this study is to describing the effect of multimorbidity on healthcare cost in Korea using US Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health (OASH) list. Methods: We analyzed the Korea Health Panel Data representing non-institutionalized Korean adult populations aged 20 and more. We calculated multimorbidity index based on OASH list and estimated the prevalence and healthcare cost for each OASH chronic disease. Results: In 2011, 15.2 million (39.6%) Koreans aged 20 and more were living with chronic condition. The health care cost due to chronic diseases, accounted for 80.2% of the overall healthcare costs and the prevalence of chronic conditions, the prevalence of multimorbidity and healthcare cost increased with ages. In the analysis using OASH list, 40% of the adult population over the age of 20 and 66.7% of the population over the age of 65 was affected with multimorbidity. In most of diseases in OASH list, prevalence of mulitmorbidity was high and healthcare cost increased with multimorbidity. Conclusion: OASH chronic disease list that accounts for 72.4% of prevalence and 86.7% of healthcare cost of persons with chronic conditions in Korea. OASH chronic disease list would be a useful and representative indicator for studying multimorbidity.

• Journal of Medicine and Life Science
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.52-54
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• 2019

While sustainability is seen in terms of social, economic and environmental dimensions, securing longterm financial costs and planning long-term strategic perspective among policy-makers are needed to maintain a healthcare system sustainability. Thus, the networking and cooperation between policy makers and health care workers should be tightened and strengthened in order to keep and enhance the healthcare system sustainability.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.82 no.1
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• pp.27-34
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• 2019

Background: Understanding the burden of disease is important to establish cost-effective treatment strategies and to allocate healthcare resources appropriately. However, little reliable information is available regarding the overall economic burden imposed by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in Korea. Methods: This study is a multicenter observational research on the COPD burden in Korea. Total COPD costs were comprised of three categories: direct medical, direct non-medical, and indirect costs. For direct medical costs, institutional investigation was performed at 13 medical facilities mainly based on the claims data. For direct non-medical and indirect costs, site-based surveys were administered to the COPD patients during routine visits. Total costs were estimated using the COPD population defined in the recent report. Results: The estimated total costs were approximately 1,245 million US dollar (1,408 billion Korean won). Direct medical costs comprised approximately 20% of the total estimated costs. Of these, formal medical costs held more than 80%. As direct non-medical costs, nursing costs made up the largest percentage (39%) of the total estimated costs. Costs for COPD-related loss of productivity formed four fifths of indirect costs, and accounted for up to 33% of the total costs. Conclusion: This study shows for the first time the direct and indirect costs of COPD in Korea. The total costs were enormous, and the costs of nursing and lost productivity comprised approximately 70% of total costs. The results provide insight for an effective allocation of healthcare resources and to inform establishment of strategies to reduce national burden of COPD.