• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.319-329
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• 2010

Objectives: This study was performed to determine the levels of quality of life (QOL) according to the grade of long-term care service for the elderly people who were admitted from long-term care insurance, and to reveal its association with the physical and mental functioning such as the Activity of Daily Living (ADL), the Instrumental Activity of Daily Living (IADL), the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), and the Mini-Mental State Examination-Korean version (MMSE-K). Methods: The interviews were performed during the period from March 1 to May 31, 2009, for 958 elderly people in urban and rural areas. The questionnaire items included various indices such as the ADL, IADL, CES-D, and MMSE-K, as independent variables and the index of QOL, as the dependent ones. For statistical analysis, t-tests were used for the mean scores of QOL according to gender and the grade of long-term care services, and Spearman's correlation was used for each variable. The effects of physical and mental functioning for QOL were assessed by covariance structure analysis. The statistical significance was set at p<0.05. Results: The mean scores of QOL among all the subjects was $55.4{\pm}15.62$ (Grade I: $49.7{\pm}14.17$, Grade II: $56.8{\pm}14.62$, Grade III: $59.4{\pm}16.36$), and it was lower according to the higher grade of long-term care insurance. In terms of the correlation matrix of the QOL and the physical and mental function factors, the QOL showed positive correlation with the ADL, IADL and MMSE-K, while it had negative correlation with depression. On the analysis of covariance, mental functioning (depression and the MMSE-K) had a greater influence on the level of QOL than the physical functioning (ADL and IADL). Conclusions: The level of the QOL in the elderly people who were admitted from long-term care insurance was lower according to higher the grade of long-term care insurance. Also, the mental functioning (depression and MMSE-K) was more influential on the level of the QOL than the physical functioning (ADL and IADL).

• 한국보건간호학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2004.05a
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• pp.79-90
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• 2004

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.305-314
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• 2016

Background: The purpose of this study is to examine the characteristics of and factors associated with long-term care (LTC) utilization under public long-term care insurance (LTCI) among end-of-life older adults in Korea. Methods: Using a 5% sample of older people aged 65 or older and their health and LTC insurance data, two-part model analyses were conducted. We compared LTC uses and their determinants during the last year of life among decedents in the year 2010 with those of survivors. We also compared the medical uses of the same sample with their LTC uses. Results: The end-of-life elderly were more likely to use LTC, and their expenditure on LTC was higher than their counterparts. Whether or not older people used LTC during their last year of life was significantly affected by age, sex, health insurance, household income, and living alone; however, LTC costs of the decedents were only affected by functional status, which may have been due to the reimbursement scheme of the current LTCI, which is mainly based on functional dependency level. For the survivors, having chronic diseases significantly increased the likelihood of LTC use, which was not the case for the decedents. End-of-life elderly with relatively low social economic status were more likely to use the LTC other than medical services, while the health conditions affected their medical uses most significantly. Conclusion: The study findings provide key information for predicting demand related to the increasing LTC needs of Korean older people at the end of life.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.37-47
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• 2024

Purpose: This study aimed to determine the effect of adjusted out-of-pocket maximum rules in the 'differential co-payment ceiling', which means having a higher burden of co-payment, that expanded to the entire ceiling level in long-stay admission patients in long-term care hospitals(LTCH). Methodology: We used health insurance claim data between January 1, 2022, and December 31, 2022 received from the National Health Insurance Service. The study populations were inpatients in long-term care hospitals more than 1 days during the study period. We performed the difference in characteristics of the LTCH patient of the differential and general ceiling by the chi-square test. We estimated the change of the population, cost, and co-payments per person under the assumption of restructuring. Finding: Based on adjusted out-of-pocket maximum rules in 2023, it was expected that the number of benefits decreases at the high-income level while increasing at the low-income level. The burden of health expenditure after reimbursement of co-payment ceiling, is expected to increase by 65.1% in the highest medical necessity, whereas the low medical necessity would decreases compared to 2022. Practical Implications: The results demonstrate that the current out-of-pocket maximum rules do not reflect the needs of medical necessity. This study suggested the need to reflect the medical necessity in LTCH on the out-of-pocket maximum rules in the future.

• Research in Community and Public Health Nursing
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.272-283
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• 2016

Purpose: This is a comparative study using secondary data from the Korean national long term care (LTC) insurance. Methods: Visiting nursing (VN) service users (n=666) and non-users (n=4,375) were extracted and compared in terms of medical expenditures, length of hospitalization, and annual number of ambulatory care visits to investigate effects of VN services in LTC. Results: Total health care expenditures were compared between the two groups and it was found that VN service users spent about $ 1700 than non-users for their medical costs between 2009 and 2011. The average length of in-hospital stay for VN service users was 19.4 days shorter than that of non-users. However, using VN services did not significantly influence the annual number of ambulatory care visits. Conclusion: The study has found that VN services are effective ways of providing community-based LTC services. We recommend LTC policy makers to further utilize VN services to deliver cost effective health care services.

• Journal of the Korean Dietetic Association
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.67-84
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• 2022

This study aimed to explore the status of food service outsourcing behavior of long-term care institutions (LTCIs) through a cross-sectional survey using a questionnaire administered between July 16th and August 7th, 2020. The survey respondents were either dietitians or facility managers, who worked at 731 nursing homes, 477 group homes, and 673 day-care centers. Approximately 25.9% of nursing homes, 11.7% of group homes, and 33.1% of day-care centers used a managed-services company to operate their food service units. The main reason for outsourcing food service by nursing homes was related to the staffing of dietitians and cooks, whereas group homes and day-care centers outsourced food services due to factors relating to meal costs and the cooking process. Almost all the LTCIs entered into private contracts for outsourced food services. Only a few food service contracts included the types of meals, nutrition standards such as protein and calories per meal, and the parameter or ratio of food cost. Of the respondents, 84.5% from nursing homes, 87.5% from group homes, and 87.1% from day-care centers agreed that the quality of outsourced food services of the LTCIs should be regulated. Meals are essential for maintaining the health and functional status of LTCI users. As more LTCIs outsource their food services, we suggest the following: (1) Increasing the minimum dietitian staffing standards for LTCIs as per the Welfare of Senior Citizens Act and requiring at least one dietitian for every nursing home, (2) Making it mandatory to use a standard food service contract template when drafting food service contract, and (3) Developing realistic standards for food service operations considering the size and operation type of the LTCIs.

• The Journal of the Korean life insurance medical association
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• v.23
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• pp.58-68
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• 2004

• Journal of Korean Public Health Nursing
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.232-250
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• 2009

Purpose: This study was designed to define the roles, tasks, and activities of home visiting nurses aimed at enhancing the quality of nursing care under the long-term care insurance regulation for the elderly introduced on July 1, 2008 in Korea. Methods: A review of domestic and foreign literature was used to formulate the proposed roles, tasks, and activities of visiting nurses, which were subsequently modified and complemented by the agreement of home visiting nurse experts and acceptance of 127 nurses. Data was collected from 04 June - 17 September 2008 and analyzed concerning frequency and percentile using SPSS ver. 15.0. Results: The established functions of home visiting nurses were direct nursing service provider, case manager, patient educator, decision maker, care coordinator, and research worker. These functions involved 27 different tasks and 167 activities. Conclusion: The roles, tasks, and activities of visiting nurses, established based upon the guidelines of the Long-term Care Insurance Act for the elderly, were verified for their applicability by nurses involved in home care delivery. These parameters will provide a useful tool in developing an assessment to enhance the quality of home-based care for the elderly in Korea.

• The Korean Journal of Health Service Management
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.119-131
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• 2013

The purpose of this study is to analyze contents on media about the problems of long-term care facilities. For achieving this purpose, we reviewed 'KINDS(http://www.kinds.or.kr/)' from July, 2008 to May, 2012 which was an synthetic newspaper and TV news searching system. Among 320 articles, we finally analyzed 72 articles: 218 articles were duplicated and 30 articles did not directly related or were not objective. The results were divided with seven parts: 'long-term care facilities', 'employee' 'health care and accidents', 'providing and management of service', 'meals related problems', 'maltreatment of client', 'disorders & unfairness long-term care benefit. Among these seven parts, we could confirm specific and major problems, which were lack of safety management, incompleteness facilities & equipments, shortage of long-term care manpower, insufficient service providing low quality of service, hiding money from elderly's accounts, and providing some money to get national subsidies. For resolving these problems, the long-term service guidelines must be prepared and the related facilities must cooperate each other for providing high quality of service. In addition, the efficient systems must be made to find out long-term care problems and unfairness of service providing and strict management rules or sanctions must be needed.

• 한국노년학
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.177-194
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• 2009

Korea government has launched long-term care insurance from 2008. However, one of the most important issues, whether or not providing cash benefit, is still unresolved. In this paper, in order to provide policy guidelines for the long-term care insurance, I attempt to estimate the Willingness-To-Accept (WTA) of the cash subsidy for informal care by using Double Bounded Dichotomous Choice method, a branch of Contingent Valuation Method (CVM). In doing so, I also estimated the determinants of the preference for cash benefit. Data were obtained from face-to-face survey interviews with 300 informal care-givers at three major general hospitals in Seoul, Korea. The questionnaire was constructed with two scenarios (mild/severe symptom). The results from logistic regression analyses and the estimation of WTA indicate that informal care-givers are willing to accept the cash benefit as low as 628 thousands won for mild fragile elderly and 1,072 thousands won for severe fragile elderly. The strength of this paper is that I estimated the WTA of the cash benefit by reflecting the changes in preferences of informal care-givers. The analytic results from the this paper suggest that the cash benefit in long-term care insurance is indispensible in achieving the goal of the long-term care system.