• Nutrition Research and Practice
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.400-403
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• 2015

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: By the year 2050, thirty-eight percent of the Korean population will be over the age of 65. Health care costs for Koreans over age 65 reached 15.4 trillion Korean won in 2011, accounting for a third of the total health care costs for the population. Chronic degenerative diseases, including coronary heart disease (CHD), drive long-term health care costs at an alarming annual rate. In the elderly population, loss of independence is one of the main reasons for this increase in health care costs. Korean heath policies place a high priority on the prevention of CHD because it is a major cause of morbidity and mortality. SUBJECTS/METHODS: This evidence-based study aims to the estimate potential health care cost savings resulting from the daily intake of omega-3 fatty acid supplementation. Potential cost savings associated with a reduced risk of CHD and the medical costs potentially avoided through risk reduction, including hospitalizations and physician services, were estimated using a Congressional Budget Office cost accounting methodology. RESULTS: The estimate of the seven-year (2005-2011) net savings in medical costs resulting from a reduction in the incidence of CHD among the elderly population through the daily use of omega-3 fatty acids was approximately 210 billion Korean won. Approximately 92,997 hospitalizations due to CHD could be avoided over the seven years. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that omega-3 supplementation in older individuals may yield substantial cost-savings by reducing the risk of CHD. It should be noted that additional health and cost benefits need to be revisited and re-evaluated as more is known about possible data sources or as new data become available.

• 한국노년학
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.277-290
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• 2011

The present study examined the impact of work stress and job satisfaction on intention to leave among staff including social workers, nurses, and care workers. The study subject included 235 staff in a welfare organization that provides long-term care services. Data was analyzed using multiple linear regression. The findings of the study show that work stress and job satisfaction affect intention to leave in the context of welfare organizations. Demographic variables were not the main focus of this study and thus these results are incidental. Staff with higher levels of work stress were more likely to think about leaving, while those with grater job satisfaction were less likely. There were several limitations in this study. Generalizability of the findings are limited to staff working in the province of Jeonnam. The results have important implications for the development of strategies to minimize turnover intention in long-term care. Reducing the intent to leave is desirable for issues of both cost reduction and quality of care. Managers could perhaps start to consider decreasing work overload assigned to staff. This study also provides some insight into the work status of new staff. Clearly this finding needs to be explored in further research studies. A more comprehensive model is likely required to adequately explain intention to leave the job.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Culture
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.47-58
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• 1998

Although it is increasing the number of day-care centers in Korea, but the quality of food and nutrition service are not increased sufficiently. The purpose of this study was to investigate the current practices of food and nutrition service in day-care centers. Questionnaire were sent to the directors of 750 day-care centers and 253 returned the complete answers. Staffing structure revealed that only 13% of the facilities had a dietitian. And compared with centers without a dietitian, there were more centers having nutritional standards, using facilities for service, and having long-term planning of meals in centers with a dietitian. In the using of foodservice budget, the centers having dietitian consumed more money for subsidiary dishes than for the staples. All centers needed increment of supplementation for the cost of foodservice and for hiring a dietitian. To improve the quality of food and nutrition services in day-care center, foodservice practices have to be conducted by professional personnel and to confirm the standard of service and to inspect the management of food and nutritional service.

• Journal of KIBIM
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.75-90
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• 2021

A smart home system improves the elderly's quality of life by monitoring and analyzing their movements and health conditions with better health-care and social support services. Therefore, there has been an effort to adopt a smart home system for the independently living elderly. However, to the best of our knowledge, no study has investigated the usability of a smart home system on actual independently living elderly housing in long-term settings. Thus, this study aims to demonstrate the usability of a smart home system on independently living elders in living lab conditions. The BLE smart band and the BLE receiver were chosen for the smart home system to monitor the movement of the participants in their homes as well as to monitor the heart rates, step counts, sleep index. Nine independent living elderly from the senior welfare center in Kimjae participated in this living lab demonstration experiment for ten months. This demonstration experiment confirmed the effectiveness of low-cost and easily adoptable IoT-based BLE sensor sets on independent living elders and discussed the troubles and limitations of the experiment. By grasping the pros and cons of IoT-based BLE sensor sets, this study seeks to improve the accessibility and usability of smart home systems for the elderly population in independent living arrangements.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.53-83
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• 1993

A small number of high cost patients usually spend a larger proportion of scarce health resources. Korea is no exception. Under the national health insurance, 12% of the insured persons have consumed approximately half of the national health insurance expenditures. Therefore, it is necessary to identify the characteristics of the high cost patient group, if we would like to reduce them. This study has defined high cost patients as those who have spent one and half million won and over per 6 months. The study reveals that high cost users are those who have a longer length of stays(LOS), 40days of LOS in the 6 months, have multiple admissions, 2 to 3 admissions per 6 months and are the elderly patients. They have spent 814.126won per on the average, and commonly suffered from malignant neoplasms, circulatory diseases, fracture, diabetes mellitus, etc. Unlike the case of western developed countries, early readmissions are not the major causes of high cost spending in Korea. Undoubtedly, a lengthy admission is the main cause of large spending. Health policies should vigorously be explored to respond appropriately. There are evidences that hospital beds are often misused. As the Korean health care system is lacking in a mechanism of patient evaluation under the fee-for-service remuneration system, an idea of progressive patient care needs to be tested. The Goverment should set up health policy to diversify the role of long-term care facilities and encourage people to establish them. Further studies are needed to identify factors influencing large medical bills necessary for formulating the health policy on cost containment.

• Journal of Korea Society of Industrial Information Systems
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.11-20
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• 2023

The cost of medical treatment for motor vehicle accidents is increasing every year. In this study, we created a model to predict long-term hospitalization(more than 18 days) among minor patients, which is the main item of increasing traffic accident medical expenses, using five algorithms such as decision tree, and analyzed the factors affecting long-term hospitalization. As a result, the accuracy of the prediction models ranged from 91.377 to 91.451, and there was no significant difference between each model, but the random forest and XGBoost models had the highest accuracy of 91.451. There were significant differences between models in the importance of explanatory variables, such as hospital location, name of disease, and type of hospital, between the long-stay and non-long-stay groups. Model validation was tested by comparing the average accuracy of each model cross-validated(10 times) on the training data with the accuracy of the validation data. To test of the explanatory variables, the chi-square test was used for categorical variables.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.768-781
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• 1996

The problem of care of patients and families with Alzheimer's disease has become a conscious raising social policy issue in Korea. The government of the Republic of Korea has become cognizant of the situation and has begun searching for ways to remedy it. Thus, there is a need for a comprehensive under-standing of the situation in which patients and their families are struggling and the enormous problems of care. With a realization of the urgent need, this study was done to investigate the situation and the care needs of families with patients with Alzheimer's Disease, and to compare the effectiveness of services utilized by the families in terms of cost and effects on patient's conditions and on family live. The Subjects for the study were 29 families with hospitalized patients, 25 families utilizing hospital outpatient clinics, 14 families utilizing day care facilities, and 16 families with homebound patients. A total of 84 families were interviewed by four trained interviewers using structured and semistructured questionnaires. The data produced from these interviews included : the patient's stage of Alzheimer's disease, patient's bizarre behavior, hours spent on patient care per day, family burden and quality of life, direct and indirect costs encountered in the care of patients, and the families' evaluation of the effectiveness of the services received. The data were analyzed to determine the relationships between family charactersistics, patient's conditions and services utilization. The effectiveness of each of the service entities was assessed through families evaluation and hoped for service and comparisons were made between services in terms of the cost-effectiveness ratios. After initial comparison of cost-effectiveness ratios, further analysis was done to compare between groups for incremental effectiveness for each incremental unit of cost to determine the most cost-effective service entities. The findings of the study are as fellows : 1. The choice of living arrangement and the types of services are a function of the stage of Alzheimer's condition and the economic status of the family. 2. Comparision of the cost of care showed that most expenses were encountered in by families with hospitalization, families using outpatient services, and families using day care services in that order. The least expense was involved in the care of homebound patients. The economic burden felt by families was in the same order as expenses. 3. The average number of hours spent on daily patient care was 9.9 hours for the outpatient clinic users, 9.7 hours for homebound patients, and 5.4 hours for day care users. 4. There were significant differences in the patient's conditions (CDRL), bizarre behaviors and the families's burden by living arrangement and /or types of service. However, no significant difference was found between groups in the family's quality of life. 5. The families rated the services of day care center as most effective for the care of the patients and families, except for a few families who had experienced some improvement in the patient's conditions. The outpatient clinic users expressed psychological comforts mainly in that the patient was being taken care of. For those hospitalized patients, families expressed the comfort of being relieved of the burden of care and that the patient is being professionally cared for. Form the analysis of the costs, hours of patient care, patient's bizarre behaviors, family's quality of life and burdens, and family's evaluation of services, it is concluded that up to the mid stage of Alzheimer's condition, the utilization of day care center services is found to be the most cost-effective, and toward the end stage of the Alzheimer's disease, it is hoped that there will be a establishment of long term or short term in-patient facilities for the protection of patients and preservation of the integrity of families for less cost. Thus. it was concluded that the family centered system of care is the most effective for Korea with systematic support systems developed for the care of patients and their families according to the needs of families as the patient's condition deteriorates.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.1-20
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• 1999

Since the late 1980s, there have been radical changes in the managerial environment of Y University Medical Center(YUMC). Externally, the competition among hospitals has intensified due to the establishment of universal health insurance in 1939 and the entrance of large enterprises into the health care industry in the early 1990s. In addition, government regulation of medical institution is becoming stricter. Also, consumer groups have continued to demand the respect for patient rights and improvement of the quality of medical services. Internally, the financial condition of YUMC has worsened, not only because weak control and poor mediation in its large-scale structure have made its operation inefficient, but also because the rates of increase in the prices of goods and labor have grown faster than any increases in revenues. This study on materials management at YUMC presents a way for YUMC to reduce costs and increase its productivity, thereby overcoming its financial difficulties and dealing with external pressures. This study utilized the case studies of the materials purchasing and medical supply management in the United States and the comparative analysis of management to suggest short-term and long-term alternatives for innovation in YUMC. The goals of the short-term alternatives for innovation are to centralize the purchasing and supply departments and to simplify the decision-making processes. Through these attempts, it is estimated that YUMC's costs could be reduced by $600,000 per year. In the long-term, it is necessary to consider introducing a Supply Processing Distribution(SPD) system and setting up a centralized electronic system for supply and inventory management, although it is difficult to estimate the effect of cost-cutting because of the lack of analysis data. Thus, YUMC should thoroughly analyze initial investment costs and economical efficiency generated from long-term alternatives.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Fundamentals of Nursing
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.391-400
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• 2000

A long-term bed rest results in an inevitable foot drop. Yet preventive device such as a foot board and high-neck tennis shoes, are not widely used. This study was conducted to compare the effects of a pillow-type foot board with that of the band-type device. The band-type device of a resonable price is designed for an effective prevention of foot drop, and the convenience for it use. Among the non-equivalent control group design, foot drop preventive effects, usefulness of the device, as well as its cost effectiveness were examined. The study was carried out for four months from December 1999, and its subject had been patients and nurses of two intensive care units at K medical center in Seoul. According to the study purpose, the data collected were analyzed by $x^2-test$ and t-test. The results are as follow : 1. The ROM of ankle joint is promoted in the experimental group with a band-type device comparing the control group with a pillow type one. Dorsiflexion is particularly increased in the experimental group as compared with the control group, while planterflexion hardly shows any change. 2. The usefulness score of the experimental group nurses using the band-type device (23.97) is higher than that of the control group nurses (18.88). 3. In an aspect of the unit production cost, band-type devices are low-priced compare with pillow-type or other foot board (wooden) or high-neck tennis shoes. In summary, the newly developed band-type device is both useful and preventive for a foot drop. It is also desirable regarding to the production cost and the cost effectiveness. This fact proves that the new anti-foot drop device could be practical both for clinical care and home care. Yet the results were obtained by some subjects, it should be used after a further examination. More effective nursing intervention could be observed throughout general studies, including proper positioning and foot and ankle exercises which are the important variables of the foot drop prevention.

• The Korean Journal of Pain
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.23-28
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• 1992

The use of epidural narcotics to treat cancer pain was first described by Behar et al in 1979. More recently, a variety of implantable INDSs have been described for long-term intraspinal narcotic administration. Especially, among these systems INDS typeIII which is designed by Poletti et al is relatively low cost and less risk of infection, therefore this system has been widely accepted but the clinical experience is insufficient yet. 1, Problems, 1) thorough education of patients and care-givers about this system the method of drug delivery and the situations could be happen in using this system. 2) high cost of continuous drug delivery system 3) legal problems about morphine carry-out in the case of bolus infusion by syringe 1. Complications; 1) by morphine; Significant respiratory depression was not found in all 21cases. other morphine-related complications were occurred occasionally but improved within a few days by appropriate treatment. 2) by system, Blockage or leakage of catheter was occurred in 2cases and wound infection was occurred in 2cases and so reimplantation was done.