• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.53 no.3
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• pp.205-210
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• 2020

Objectives: Aging is assumed to be accompanied by greater health care expenditures. The objective of this retrospective, bottom-up micro-costing study was to identify and analyze the variables related to increased health care costs for the elderly from the provider's perspective. Methods: The analysis included all elderly inpatients who were admitted in 2017 to a hospital in Tehran, Iran. In total, 1288 patients were included. The Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used. Results: Slightly more than half (51.1%) of patients were males, and 81.9% had a partial recovery. The 60-64 age group had the highest costs. Cancer and joint/orthopedic diseases accounted for the highest proportion of costs, while joint/orthopedic diseases had the highest total costs. The surgery ward had the highest overall cost among the hospital departments, while the intensive care unit had the highest mean cost. No statistically significant relationships were found between inpatient costs and sex or age group, while significant associations (p<0.05) were observed between inpatient costs and the type of ward, length of stay, type of disease, and final status. Regarding final status, costs for patients who died were 3.9 times higher than costs for patients who experienced a partial recovery. Conclusions: Sex and age group did not affect hospital costs. Instead, the most important factors associated with costs were type of disease (especially chronic diseases, such as joint and orthopedic conditions), length of stay, final status, and type of ward. Surgical services and medicine were the most important cost items.

• Journal of The Korea Institute of Healthcare Architecture
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.7-15
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• 2010

An early stage of general hospital in Korea was the quantitative growth period. Remodeling has been required to meet the increasing medical demands. To accept the change of paradigm and management operation method, remodeling occurred from the 20th century. Remodeling plans are difficult to define the direction of the detailed plan due to various factors in the beginning of the construction, Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the possibility and limitation of a feasible remodeling plan of general hospitals through the comparison of existing hospital before remodeling and after the remodeling takes effect. A comparison of the researched hospital's blue prints before and after the remodeling and recently built hospital's blue print, analyzed characteristic of the space variation by the remodeling. The purpose of research is to confirm a possibility and limitation of remodeling of general hospitals comparing with merits and faults of extension, reconstruction, and construction. In conclusion, the area of remodeling hospitals increase mostly medical department(ward, outpatient department, inpatient department) and subsidiary facilities, but the area of ward and inpatient department are less than the new hospitals. Especially, public area is greatly increased by the diversification of corridor function. Also, remodeling hospitals represent a limitation to plan departments in need of equipment-intensive space. To address this problem, expansion space is used mainly with inpatient department and existing space is placed mainly with low-impact department by equipment ; outpatient department, administration department.

• Journal of the korean academy of Pediatric Dentistry
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• v.44 no.4
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• pp.403-411
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• 2017

The purpose of this research is analyzing present condition, and pursuing developmental direction of consultation to department of dentistry for medical inpatient with dental trauma. This research conducted a retrospective analysis of consultation to department of dentistry for medical inpatient at Wonju Severance Christian Hospital from March 2011 to February 2017. This research analyzed chief complaint and dental diagnosis, referring department, time of consultation after dental trauma, relation between hospitalization period and time of consultation after dental trauma, relation between dental trauma and admission in the medical department due to trauma, cause and age of dental trauma occurrence, treatment of dental trauma, and revisiting rate of inpatient with dental trauma after discharge. Among all the chief complaint and dental diagnosis, dental trauma was the highest. Among all the referring departments, departments of surgery were the highest. In relation to being delayed of consultation term after dental trauma, it turned out that there's pretty high mutual relation between the hospitalization period and the consultation term after dental trauma, and the hospitalization period had the quantitative influence on the consultation term. Statistically, dental trauma and admission in the medical department due to trauma had significant relations. In case of those patients due to car accidents, they had dental trauma without exception. Statistically, patient's group with dental trauma in hospital room was younger than patient's group with dental trauma in non-hospital room. Statistically, dental trauma and treatment in hospitalization had no significant relations, and dental trauma and revisiting department of dentistry after discharge had no significant relations. For the child and adolescent inpatients hospitalized for car accidents, there is high possibility of accompanying dental trauma, and dental consultations can be delayed. For the young child inpatients, the possibility of dental trauma occurrence in hospital room is high. Moreover, treatments during hospitalization and revisiting department of pediatric dentistry after discharge are not performed well for inpatients with dental trauma. Regarding these results, it can be an alternative that improving of consultation system, dedicated workforce placement and having dental facilities and equipment in the hospital ward, education to medical doctor and dentist, communication between medical doctor and dentist. This research can be used as a study material of medical and dental departments, and it's expected to be committed to developing of consultations to department of dentistry for child and adolescent inpatients with dental trauma.

• Korean Journal of Digital Imaging in Medicine
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.20-23
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• 1997

The purpose of this paper is to describe the transition of a 1,100 beds teritary hospital from 50% softcopy operation to full PACS operation. For the past 2 years, radiologists and clinicians have been using PACS to provide softcopy services to the outpatient clinics and inpatient wards of orthopedics surgery, neurosurgery and neurology as well as emergency room, surgical intensive care unit, medical intensive unit, pediatrics intensive care unit and neonatal intensive care unit. The examinations requested by these departments account for about 50% of hospital's radiological exams. In September 1996, we began the second phase of PACS implementation and installed additional workstations (102) in the remaining wards and clinics, interfaced to PACS additional imaging modalites, and increased the capacity of both the image server (256 Gbytes) and optical juke boxes (3 Tbytes). As of January 1997, we are in the final phase of moving away from conventional film system to full PACS operation.

• Korean Medical Education Review
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.6-14
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• 2018

In recent years, Korean medical schools have shown a growing interest in the longitudinal integrated clerkship (LIC) as a means of improving clinical education. Some overseas medical schools have tried the LIC since the 1970s. In the 1990s, several universities in the United States, Canada, and Australia introduced LICs. A variety of studies have confirmed positive results of the LIC. Traditional block-rotation is a discipline-based, inpatient-centered practice. Instead, under the LIC system, a medical student responsible for a panel of longitudinal patients observes developments of their diseases, serving several departments simultaneously. Overseas medical schools have different LIC models depending on their affiliate hospitals' sizes and characteristics. The purpose of this study is to introduce LIC practices in Harvard Medical School and University of California San Francisco, which could be applied by Korean medical schools. This paper also aims to find out the strategies that have been able to help the two US medical schools implement the LIC successfully.

• Journal of the Korean Dietetic Association
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.378-396
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• 2010

The objectives of this study were to explore hospital foodservice management and to investigate conditions related to health insurance coverage of inpatient meals. A questionnaire was distributed to the nutrition departments of 44 hospitals in Seoul on July 2009. The average kitchen area was 0.5 $m^2$, and centralized distribution systems were in place. Partition walls from contamination zones, separate work tables to prevent cross-contamination, exclusive areas for preparing tube feeding, and split carts with refrigerated and convection heat settings were largely used in tertiary hospitals. Most dietitians did meal rounds (93.2%) and surveyed for patient satisfaction (86.4%). The major theme of QI (Quality Improvement) was menu management (31.8%). The health insurance fees for meals were (won)4,938.9 for a general diet, (won)5,199.8 for a therapeutic diet, (won)4,067.0 for tube feeding, (won)9,950.0 for sterilized diet, and (won)18,383.4 for diets not covered by health insurance. The prices for general and therapeutic diets were significantly lower in hospitals compared to tertiary or general hospitals (P<0.001). The cost composed of 48.3% food, 44.0% labor and 7.7% overhead for general diets and 47.9%, 44.5% and 7.6% for therapeutic diets. In the case of health insurance coverage for patient meals, the number of items applied to general diets averaged 2.8 out of 4 and for therapeutic diets it averaged 1.9 out of 3. To reform the health insurance coverage system for patient meals, it is urgent that the qualified level of patient meals is presented from a national viewpoint, and monitoring should be performed consistently by developing the evaluation tools.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Fundamentals of Nursing
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.245-265
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• 1997

The purpose of this study was to promote the effectiveness in managing disease or injury, by examining the length of stay in hospital according to characteristics concerned before and after operation, and by serving as a basis for reducing that length. As a result of investigating the length of stay in hospital according to inpatient's personal characteristics, clinical features and other characteristics concerned, the following characteristics appeared significant. The characteristics that showed a significant difference about the length of stay in hospital before and after operation were the age and the fact whether one was married or not among inpatient's personal characteristics. The significant ones among clinical features were the route to be taken to hospital, the form of insurance, the experience of re-hospitalization, whether another disease coexisted, the experiment of changing department, whether a diagnosis was determined by consultation, whether an intensive care unit was used, whether re-operation was performed, the total number of case of the experience of re-hospitalization, inpatient who were again sent to hospital under the same diagnosis was not included in the investigation, which was pointed out as a limit in this study. The significant ones among other characteristics concerned were the date and season when the patients were taken to hospital and the doctor in attendance. The doctor in attendance appeared to give a significant impact on the length of stay in hospital before operation, but no significant difference was noted in the mean among the doctors in attendance. And those characteristics were not found regularly among the selected departments. As stated above, one way to reduce the length of stay In hospital was to diminish the length of stay in hospital before operation. The term of hospitalization before operation shall be reduced by grasping the factors that affected that length before operation and by conducting examination as many as possible in the out-patient department. Also, the efforts should be put on that length after operation. The management of hospital seemed to be successfully carried out if those factors affected that length were effectively controlled.

• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.104-124
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• 1996

Background : In these days, the health care organizations have concerned about customer-centered care in order to empower the competitiveness on the health care markets. The departments working for quality management of the hospitals have used health care quality indicators in terms of medical areas as well as service areas of the hospitals. However, there were insufficient efforts to develop the credible measurement to seek the customers' needs, their expectations and their satisfaction levels related to health care services because various kinds of challenges were in the process of scale development to measure customers' satisfaction in health care. The purpose of this study was to develop the satisfaction scale to health care services in a Korea health care organization and to test its tool with validity and reliability. Method : The concept of this tool was acceptability that one of the components of health care quality defined by Donabedian. Acceptability has the five dimensions of concept: Accessibility; Patient-Practitioner Relations; Amenities; Patient Preferences as to the effects of care; and Patient Preferences as to the costs of care. The Satisfaction Tool to Health Care Services was reviewed by expert panel with five researchers, including hospital managers and a professor related to quality management of the hospitals. As a result, the content validity index was .84 in the outpatient satisfaction tool. The inpatient satisfaction tool had .87 of the content validity index. The Satisfaction Tools to Health Care Services finally consisted of 44 items for outpatients/their families and of 60 items for inpatients/their families. Study subjects of the construct validity test were 479 outpatients/their families and 561 inpatients/their families who visited or admitted at a University hospital from July 1, 1996 through August 10, 1996. The data were examined by Factor Analysis with SPSS. Result : The items of Satisfaction tools for outpatients/their families were categorized by eleven factors with eigenvalue greater than 1.0 accounting for 64.2 percent of the variation in item scores. Also, the items of inpatient tool had eleven factors with eigenvalue greater than 1.0 accounting for 60.3 percent of the variation in item scores. The reliability of overall scale were .95 and .96 for the outpatients/their families satisfaction scores and inpatient/their families satisfaction scores. The internal consistency reliability with eleven factors was ranged from .30 to .94 for inpatients/their families. The Satisfaction Tool with eleven factors for inpatients/their families had internal consistency reliability ranged from .53 to .89. Conclusion : The Satisfaction Tools to Health Care Services focused on outpatients/their families and inpatients/their families developed in this study had a high reliability and the strong evidence of content validity and construct validity based on quality concept. Therefore, this tool would be utilized as a credible quality indicator of health care services to assess the quality problems and to monitor the quality improvement activities in Korean Health Care Organizations.

• Journal of The Korea Institute of Healthcare Architecture
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.37-46
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• 2019

Purpose: The Intensive Care Unit (ICU) is an important inpatient care area where critical patients are treated intensively with advanced medical technology. The level of care of ICU and the modernization of related facilities is an important indicator of health care quality. At the present time, when the Regional public hospitals are frequently expanding, the rational planning of the ICU has become an important part of the medical institutions treating the ICU. The purpose of this study is to present basic data with net area which can be used in the architectural planning of the ICU. Methods: The investigation and analysis of the ICUs were conducted on 24 medical facilities, based on theoretical analysis through relevant guidelines, articles, and documents, and on the basis of the actual space composition and net area analysis through the architectural drawings. Results: This study provides basic data such as bed placement type of ICU, relationship with other departments, distance between NS and bed, distance between beds, and net area of disease by type. Implications: The results of this paper are expected to be effective reference materials for future research for rational spatial organization and efficient operation of the Intensive Care Unit in regional public hospitals.

• Journal of The Korea Institute of Healthcare Architecture
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.53-63
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• 2021

Purpose: Intensive Care Unit (ICU) is an important field of inpatient treatment, in which critically ill patients have been treated intensively with advanced medical technology. The level of treatment in the intensive care unit and the modernization of related facilities are important indicators of the quality of medical care. At present, when regional public hospitals are expanding frequently, reasonable planning of ICU has become an important part of medical institutions that treat ICU. The purpose of this study is to provide basic data on the net area of each unit, which can be used in ICU building planning. Methods: The investigation and analysis of the ICU were conducted in 12 medical institutions, based on theoretical analysis based on relevant guidelines and literature, and analysis of actual space composition and net area through architectural drawings. Results: This research provides basic data, such as the location relationship with other important departments, regional division, spatial composition, the relationship between main activities and regions, the composition of facilities in the region, and the area and proportions of each region. Implications: It is expected that the results of this article will provide effective reference materials for the reasonable spatial organization and effective operation of the intensive care units of ordinary public hospitals of different sizes in the future.