Background: Despite the benefits of home oxygen therapy in patients suffering chronic respiratory failure, previous reports in Korea revealed lower compliance to oxygen therapy and a shorter time for oxygen use than expected. However, these papers were published before oxygen therapy was covered by the national insurance system. Therefore, this study examined whether there were some changes in compliance, using time and other clinical features of home oxygen therapy after insurance coverage. Methods: This study reviewed the medical records of patients prescribed home oxygen therapy in our hospital from November 1, 2006 to September 31, 2008. The patients were interviewed either in person or by telephone to obtain information related to oxygen therapy. Results: During study period, a total 105 patients started home oxygen therapy. The mean age was 69 and 60 (57%) were male. The mean oxygen partial pressure in the arterial blood was 54.5 mmHg and oxygen saturation was 86.3%. Primary diseases that caused hypoxemia were COPD (n=64), lung cancer (n=14), Tb destroyed lung (n=12) and others. After oxygen therapy, more than 50% of patients experienced relief of their subjective dyspnea. The mean daily use of oxygen was 9.8
Purpose : The medical imaging issuance is changed from conventional film method to Digital Compact Disk solution because of development on IT technology. However other medical record department's are undergoing identification check through and through whereas medical imaging department cannot afford to do that. So, we examine present applicant's recognition of private intelligence safeguard, and medical imaging issuance condition by CD & DVD medium toward various medical facility and then perform comparative analysis associated with domestic and foreign law & recommendation, lastly suggest standard for medical imaging issuance and process relate with internal environment. Materials and methods : First, we surveyed issuance process & required documents when situation of medical image issuance in the metropolitan medical facility by wire telephone between 2008.6.1
The exchange between buyers and sellers in the industrial market is changing from short-term to long-term relationships. Long-term relationships are governed mainly by formal contracts or informal agreements, but many scholars are now asserting that controlling relationship by using formal contracts under environmental dynamism is inappropriate. In this case, partners will depend on each other's flexibility or interdependence. The former, flexibility, provides a general frame of reference, order, and standards against which to guide and assess appropriate behavior in dynamic and ambiguous situations, thus motivating the value-oriented performance goals shared between partners. It is based on social sacrifices, which can potentially minimize any opportunistic behaviors. The later, interdependence, means that each firm possesses a high level of dependence in an dynamic channel relationship. When interdependence is high in magnitude and symmetric, each firm enjoys a high level of power and the bonds between the firms should be reasonably strong. Strong shared power is likely to promote commitment because of the common interests, attention, and support found in such channel relationships. This study deals with environmental dynamism in high-tech industry. Firms in the high-tech industry regard it as a key success factor to successfully cope with environmental changes. However, due to the lack of studies dealing with environmental dynamism and supply chain commitment in the high-tech industry, it is very difficult to find effective strategies to cope with them. This paper presents the results of an empirical study on the relationship between environmental dynamism and supply chain commitment in the high-tech industry. We examined the effects of consumer, competitor, and technological dynamism on supply chain commitment. Additionally, we examined the moderating effects of flexibility and dependence of supply chains. This study was confined to the type of high-tech industry which has the characteristics of rapid technology change and short product lifecycle. Flexibility among the firms of this industry, having the characteristic of hard and fast growth, is more important here than among any other industry. Thus, a variety of environmental dynamism can affect a supply chain relationship. The industries targeted industries were electronic parts, metal product, computer, electric machine, automobile, and medical precision manufacturing industries. Data was collected as follows. During the survey, the researchers managed to obtain the list of parts suppliers of 2 companies, N and L, with an international competitiveness in the mobile phone manufacturing industry; and of the suppliers in a business relationship with S company, a semiconductor manufacturing company. They were asked to respond to the survey via telephone and e-mail. During the two month period of February-April 2006, we were able to collect data from 44 companies. The respondents were restricted to direct dealing authorities and subcontractor company (the supplier) staff with at least three months of dealing experience with a manufacture (an industrial material buyer). The measurement validation procedures included scale reliability; discriminant and convergent validity were used to validate measures. Also, the reliability measurements traditionally employed, such as the Cronbach's alpha, were used. All the reliabilities were greater than.70. A series of exploratory factor analyses was conducted. We conducted confirmatory factor analyses to assess the validity of our measurements. A series of chi-square difference tests were conducted so that the discriminant validity could be ensured. For each pair, we estimated two models-an unconstrained model and a constrained model-and compared the two model fits. All these tests supported discriminant validity. Also, all items loaded significantly on their respective constructs, providing support for convergent validity. We then examined composite reliability and average variance extracted (AVE). The composite reliability of each construct was greater than.70. The AVE of each construct was greater than.50. According to the multiple regression analysis, customer dynamism had a negative effect and competitor dynamism had a positive effect on a supplier's commitment. In addition, flexibility and dependence had significant moderating effects on customer and competitor dynamism. On the other hand, all hypotheses about technological dynamism had no significant effects on commitment. In other words, technological dynamism had no direct effect on supplier's commitment and was not moderated by the flexibility and dependence of the supply chain. This study makes its contribution in the point of view that this is a rare study on environmental dynamism and supply chain commitment in the field of high-tech industry. Especially, this study verified the effects of three sectors of environmental dynamism on supplier's commitment. Also, it empirically tested how the effects were moderated by flexibility and dependence. The results showed that flexibility and interdependence had a role to strengthen supplier's commitment under environmental dynamism in high-tech industry. Thus relationship managers in high-tech industry should make supply chain relationship flexible and interdependent. The limitations of the study are as follows; First, about the research setting, the study was conducted with high-tech industry, in which the direction of the change in the power balance of supply chain dyads is usually determined by manufacturers. So we have a difficulty with generalization. We need to control the power structure between partners in a future study. Secondly, about flexibility, we treated it throughout the paper as positive, but it can also be negative, i.e. violating an agreement or moving, but in the wrong direction, etc. Therefore we need to investigate the multi-dimensionality of flexibility in future research.
Every company wants to know customer's requirement and makes an effort to meet them. Cause that, communication between customer and company became core competition of business and that important is increasing continuously. There are several strategies to find customer's needs, but VOC (Voice of customer) is one of most powerful communication tools and VOC gathering by several channels as telephone, post, e-mail, website and so on is so meaningful. So, almost company is gathering VOC and operating VOC system. VOC is important not only to business organization but also public organization such as government, education institute, and medical center that should drive up public service quality and customer satisfaction. Accordingly, they make a VOC gathering and analyzing System and then use for making a new product and service, and upgrade. In recent years, innovations in internet and ICT have made diverse channels such as SNS, mobile, website and call-center to collect VOC data. Although a lot of VOC data is collected through diverse channel, the proper utilization is still difficult. It is because the VOC data is made of very emotional contents by voice or text of informal style and the volume of the VOC data are so big. These unstructured big data make a difficult to store and analyze for use by human. So that, the organization need to automatic collecting, storing, classifying and analyzing system for unstructured big VOC data. This study propose an intelligent VOC analyzing system based on opinion mining to classify the unstructured VOC data automatically and determine the polarity as well as the type of VOC. And then, the basis of the VOC opinion analyzing system, called domain-oriented sentiment dictionary is created and corresponding stages are presented in detail. The experiment is conducted with 4,300 VOC data collected from a medical website to measure the effectiveness of the proposed system and utilized them to develop the sensitive data dictionary by determining the special sentiment vocabulary and their polarity value in a medical domain. Through the experiment, it comes out that positive terms such as "칭찬, 친절함, 감사, 무사히, 잘해, 감동, 미소" have high positive opinion value, and negative terms such as "퉁명, 뭡니까, 말하더군요, 무시하는" have strong negative opinion. These terms are in general use and the experiment result seems to be a high probability of opinion polarity. Furthermore, the accuracy of proposed VOC classification model has been compared and the highest classification accuracy of 77.8% is conformed at threshold with -0.50 of opinion classification of VOC. Through the proposed intelligent VOC analyzing system, the real time opinion classification and response priority of VOC can be predicted. Ultimately the positive effectiveness is expected to catch the customer complains at early stage and deal with it quickly with the lower number of staff to operate the VOC system. It can be made available human resource and time of customer service part. Above all, this study is new try to automatic analyzing the unstructured VOC data using opinion mining, and shows that the system could be used as variable to classify the positive or negative polarity of VOC opinion. It is expected to suggest practical framework of the VOC analysis to diverse use and the model can be used as real VOC analyzing system if it is implemented as system. Despite experiment results and expectation, this study has several limits. First of all, the sample data is only collected from a hospital web-site. It means that the sentimental dictionary made by sample data can be lean too much towards on that hospital and web-site. Therefore, next research has to take several channels such as call-center and SNS, and other domain like government, financial company, and education institute.
The levels of health knowledge, attitude and practice of housewives considerably effect to the health of households, communities and the nation. This study was designed to grasp the levels of health knowledge, attitude and practice of houswives and analyse the various factors effecting to health in order to provide health education services as well as materials for effective formulation and implementation of health policy to improve the health of the nation. This study has been conducted through interviews by trained surveyers for 4,281 housewives selected from 4,500 households throughout the country for 40 days during July 11-August 20, 1983. The results of survey were analysed by stepwise multiple regression and path analysis are summarized as follows; 1. Based on the measurement instrument applied to this study, the levels of health knowledge, attitude and practice of housewives were extremely low with 54.5 points out of 100 points in full. Higher level with 72 points and above was approximately 21 percent and lower level with 39 points and below was approx. 24 percent. The middle level was approx. 55 percent. In order to implement health programs successively, health education should be more strengthened and to improve the level of health knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) of the nation, political consideration as a part of spiritual reformation must be concentrated on health. 2. The level of health knowledge indicated the highest points with 57.3 the level of attitude was the second with 55.0 points and the practice level was the lowest with 50.0 point. Therefore, planning and implementation of health education program must be based on the persuasion and motivation that health knowledge turn into practice. 3. Housewives who had higher level of health knowledge, showed their practice level was relatively lower and those who had middle or low level of it practice level was the reverse. 4. Correlations among health knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) were generally higher and statistically significant at 0.1 percent level. Correlation between total health KAP level and health knowledge was the highest with r=.8092. 5. Health KAP levels showed significant differences according to the age, number of children, marital status, self-assessed health status and concern on health of the housewives interviewed (p<0.001) 6. Health KAP levels also showed significant differences according to the education level, economic status, employment before marriage and grown-up area of the housewives interviewed. (p<0.001) 7. Heath KAP levels showed significant differences according to health insurance benificiary and the existence of patients in the family. (p<0.001). 8. Health KAP levels showed significant differences according to distance to government organizations, schools, distance to health facilities, telephone possession rate, television possession rate, newspaper reading rate and activities of Ban meeting and Women's club. (p<0.001) 9. Health KAP levels showed significant differences according to electric mass communication media such as television, radio and village broadcasting etc. and printed media such as newspaper, magazine and booklets etc., IEC variables such as individual consultation and husband-wife communication, however, there was no significance with group training. 10. Health KAP of the housewives showed close correlation with personal characteristics variables, i.e., education level (r=.5302), age (r=-.3694) grown-up area (r=.3357) and employment before marriage. In general, correlation of health knowledge level was higher than the levels of attitude or practice. In case of health concern and health insurance, correlation of practice level was higher than health knowledge level. 11. Health KAP levels showed higher correlation with community environmental characteristics, Ban meeting and activity of Women's club, however, no correlation with New-village movement. 12. Among IEC variables, husband-wife communication showed the highest correlation with health KAP levels and printed media, electric mas communication media and health consultation in order. Therefore, encouragement of husband-wife communication and development of training program for men should be included in health education program. 13. Mass media such as electric mass com. and printed media were effective for knowledge transmission and husband-wife communication and individual consultation were effective for health practice. Group training was significant for knowledge transmission, however, but not significant for attitude formation or turning to health practice. To improve health KAP levels, health knowledge should be transmitted via mass media and health consultation with health professionals and field health workers should be strengthened. 14. Correlation of health KAP levels showed that knowledge level was generally higher than that of practice and recognized that knowledge was not linked with attitude or practice. 15. The twenty-five variables effecting health KAP levels of housewives had 41 per cent explanation variances among which education level had great contribution (β=.2309) and electric mass com. media (β=.1778), husband-wife communication (β=.1482), printed media, grown-up area, and distance to government organizations in order. Variances explained (R²) of health KAP were 31%, 15%, and 30% respectively. 16. Principal variables contributed to health KAP were education level (β=.12320, β=.1465), electric mass comm. media (β=.1762, β=.1839), printed media, (β=.1383, β=.1420) husband-wife communication (β=.1004, β=.1067), grown-up area and distance to government organizations, in order. Since education level contributes greatly to health KAP of the housewives, health education including curriculum development in primary, middle and high schools must be emphasized and health science must be selected as one of the basic liberal arts subject in universities. 17. Variences explained of IEC variables to health KAP were 19% in total, 14% in knowledge, 9% in attitude, and 10% in health practice. Contributions of IEC variables to health KAP levels were printed media (β=.3882), electric mass comm media (β=.3165), husb-band wife com. (β=.2095,) and consultation on health (β=.0841) in order, however, group training showed negative effect (β=-.0402). National fund must be invested for the development of Health Program through mass media such as TV and radio etc. and for printed materials such as newspaper, magazines, phamplet etc. needed for transmission of health knowledge. 18. Variables contributed to health KAP levels through IEC variables with indirect effects were education level (Ind E=0.0410), health concern (Ind E=.0161), newspaper reading rate (Ind E=.0137), TV possession rate and activity of Ban meeting in order, however, health facility showed negative effect (Ind E=-.0232) and other variables showed direct effect but not indirect effect. 19. Among the variables effecting health KAP level, education level showed the highest in total effect (TE=.2693) then IEC (TE=.1972), grown-up city (TE=.1237), newspaper reading rate (TE=.1020), distance to government organization (TE=.095) in order. 20. Variables indicating indirect effects to health KAP levels were; at knowledge level with R²=30%, education level (Ind E=.0344), newspaper reading rate (Ind E=.0112), TV possession rate (Ind E=.0689), activity of Ban meeting (Ind E=.0079) in order and at attitude level with R²=13%, education level (Ind E=. 0338), activity of Ban meeting (Ind E=.0079), and at practice level with R²=29%. education level (Ind E=.0268), health facility (Ind E=.0830) and concern on health (Ind E=.0105). 21. Total effect to health KAP levels and IEC by variable characteristics, personal characteristics variables indicated larger than community characteristics variables. 22. Multiple Correlation Coefficient (MCC) expressed by the Personal Characteristic Variable was .5049 and explained approximately 25% of variances. MCC expressed by total Community environment variable was .4283 and explained approx. 18% of variances. MCC expressed by IEC Variables was .4380 and explained approx. 19% of variances. The most important variable effected to health KAP levels was personal characteristic and then IEC variable, Community Environment variable in order. When the IEC effected with personal characteristic or community characteristic, the MCC or the variances were relatively higher than effecting alone. Therefore it was identified that the IEC was one of the important intermediate variable.
Purpose: Bereavement Memorial Service has been held every year by the hospice team at St. Vincent's Hospital for the purpose of supporting the bereaved family who feel grief and mourning. The purpose of this study is to find out the attitude of the bereaved attending at bereavement memorial service (BMS) and to find out the areas needing improvements to set up better memorial service. Methods: Hospice team sent invitation card to 180 families of patients who admitted and passed away at hospice ward Nov., 2003
Trust has been studied extensively in psychology, economics, and sociology, and its importance has been emphasized not only in marketing, but also in business disciplines in general. Unlike past relationships between suppliers and buyers, which take considerable advantage of private networks and may involve unethical business practices, partnerships between suppliers and buyers are at the core of success for industrial marketing amid intense global competition in the 21st century. A high level of mutual cooperation occurs through an exchange relationship based on trust, which brings long-term benefits, competitive enhancements, and transaction cost reductions, among other benefits, for both buyers and suppliers. In spite of the important role of trust, existing studies in buy-supply situations overlook the role of trust and do not systematically analyze the effect of trust on relational performance. Consequently, an in-depth study that determines the relation of trust to the relational performance between buyers and suppliers of business services is absolutely needed. Business services in this study, which include those supporting the manufacturing industry, are drawing attention as the economic growth engine for the next generation. The Korean government has selected business services as a strategic area for the development of manufacturing sectors. Since the demands for opening business services markets are becoming fiercer, the competitiveness of the business service industry must be promoted now more than ever. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of the mutual trust between buyers and suppliers on relational performance. Specifically, this study proposed a theoretical model of trust-relational performance in the transactions of business services and empirically tested the hypotheses delineated from the framework. The study suggests strategic implications based on research findings. Empirical data were collected via multiple methods, including via telephone, mail, and in-person interviews. Sample companies were knowledge-based companies supplying and purchasing business services in Korea. The present study collected data on a dyadic basis. Each pair of sample companies includes a buying company and its corresponding supplying company. Mutual trust was traced for each pair of companies. This study proposes a model of trust-relational performance of buying-supplying for business services. The model consists of trust and its antecedents and consequences. The trust of buyers is classified into trust toward the supplying company and trust toward salespersons. Viewing trust both at the individual level and the organizational level is based on the research of Doney and Cannon (1997). Normally, buyers are the subject of trust, but this study supposes that suppliers are the subjects. Hence, it uniquely focused on the bilateral perspective of perceived risk. In other words, suppliers, like buyers, are the subject of trust since transactions are normally bilateral. From this point of view, suppliers' trust in buyers is as important as buyers' trust in suppliers. The suppliers' trust is influenced by the extent to which it trusts the buying companies and the buyers. This classification of trust using an individual level and an organization level is based on the suggestion of Doney and Cannon (1997). Trust affects the process of supplier selection, which works in a bilateral manner. Suppliers are actively involved in the supplier selection process, working very closely with buyers. In addition, the process is affected by the extent to which each party trusts its partners. The selection process consists of certain steps: recognition, information search, supplier selection, and performance evaluation. As a result of the process, both buyers and suppliers evaluate the performance and take corrective actions on the basis of such outcomes as tangible, intangible, and/or side effects. The measurement of trust used for the present study was developed on the basis of the studies of Mayer, Davis and Schoorman (1995) and Mayer and Davis (1999). Based on their recommendations, the three dimensions of trust used for the study include ability, benevolence, and integrity. The original questions were adjusted to the context of the transactions of business services. For example, a question such as "He/she has professional capabilities" has been changed to "The salesperson showed professional capabilities while we talked about our products." The measurement used for this study differs from those used in previous studies (Rotter 1967; Sullivan and Peterson 1982; Dwyer and Oh 1987). The measurements of the antecedents and consequences of trust used for this study were developed on the basis of Doney and Cannon (1997). The original questions were adjusted to the context of transactions in business services. In particular, questions were developed for both buyers and suppliers to address the following factors: reputation (integrity, customer care, good-will), market standing (company size, market share, positioning in the industry), willingness to customize (product, process, delivery), information sharing (proprietary information, private information), willingness to maintain relationships, perceived professionalism, authority empowerment, buyer-seller similarity, and contact frequency. As a consequential variable of trust, relational performance was measured. Relational performance is classified into tangible effects, intangible effects, and side effects. Tangible effects include financial performance; intangible effects include improvements in relations, network developing, and internal employee satisfaction; side effects include those not included either in the tangible or intangible effects. Three hundred fifty pairs of companies were contacted, and one hundred five pairs of companies responded. After deleting five company pairs because of incomplete responses, one hundred five pairs of companies were used for data analysis. The response ratio of the companies used for data analysis is 30% (105/350), which is above the average response ratio in industrial marketing research. As for the characteristics of the respondent companies, the majority of the companies operate service businesses for both buyers (85.4%) and suppliers (81.8%). The majority of buyers (76%) deal with consumer goods, while the majority of suppliers (70%) deal with industrial goods. This may imply that buyers process the incoming material, parts, and components to produce the finished consumer goods. As indicated by their report of the length of acquaintance with their partners, suppliers appear to have longer business relationships than do buyers. Hypothesis 1 tested the effects of buyer-supplier characteristics on trust. The salesperson's professionalism (t=2.070, p<0.05) and authority empowerment (t=2.328, p<0.05) positively affected buyers' trust toward suppliers. On the other hand, authority empowerment (t=2.192, p<0.05) positively affected supplier trust toward buyers. For both buyers and suppliers, the degree of authority empowerment plays a crucial role in the maintenance of their trust in each other. Hypothesis 2 tested the effects of buyerseller relational characteristics on trust. Buyers tend to trust suppliers, as suppliers make every effort to contact buyers (t=2.212, p<0.05). This tendency has also been shown to be much stronger for suppliers (t=2.591, p<0.01). On the other hand suppliers trust buyers because suppliers perceive buyers as being similar to themselves (t=2.702, p<0.01). This finding confirmed the results of Crosby, Evans, and Cowles (1990), which reported that suppliers and buyers build relationships through regular meetings, either for business or personal matters. Hypothesis 3 tested the effects of trust on perceived risk. It has been found that for both suppliers and buyers the lower is the trust, the higher is the perceived risk (t=-6.621, p<0.01 for buyers; t=-2.437, p<0.05). Interestingly, this tendency has been shown to be much stronger for buyers than for suppliers. One possible explanation for this higher level of perceived risk is that buyers normally perceive higher risks than do suppliers in transactions involving business services. For this reason, it is necessary for suppliers to implement risk reduction strategies for buyers. Hypothesis 4 tested the effects of trust on information searching. It has been found that for both suppliers and buyers, contrary to expectation, trust depends on their partner's reputation (t=2.929, p<0.01 for buyers; t=2.711, p<0.05 for suppliers). This finding shows that suppliers with good reputations tend to be trusted. Prior experience did not show any significant relationship with trust for either buyers or suppliers. Hypothesis 5 tested the effects of trust on supplier/buyer selection. Unlike buyers, suppliers tend to trust buyers when they think that previous transactions with buyers were important (t=2.913 p<0.01). However, this study did not show any significant relationship between source loyalty and the trust of buyers in suppliers. Hypothesis 6 tested the effects of trust on relational performances. For buyers and suppliers, financial performance reportedly improved when they trusted their partners (t=2.301, p<0.05 for buyers; t=3.692, p<0.01 for suppliers). It is interesting that this tendency was much stronger for suppliers than it was for buyers. Similarly, competitiveness was reported to improve when buyers and suppliers trusted their partners (t=3.563, p<0.01 for buyers; t=3.042, p<0.01 for suppliers). For suppliers, efficiency and productivity were reportedly improved when they trusted buyers (t=2.673, p<0.01). Other performance indices showed insignificant relationships with trust. The findings of this study have some strategic implications. First and most importantly, trust-based transactions are beneficial for both suppliers and buyers. As verified in the study, financial performance can be improved through efforts to build and maintain mutual trust. Similarly, competitiveness can be increased through the same kinds of effort. Second, trust-based transactions can facilitate the reduction of perceived risks inherent in the purchasing situation. This finding has implications for both suppliers and buyers. It is generally believed that buyers perceive higher risks in a highly involved purchasing situation. To reduce risks, previous studies have recommended that suppliers devise risk-reducing tactics. Moving beyond these recommendations, the present study uniquely focused on the bilateral perspective of perceived risk. In other words, suppliers are also susceptible to perceived risks, especially when they supply services that require very technical and sophisticated manipulations and maintenance. Consequently, buyers and suppliers must solve problems together in close collaboration. Hence, mutual trust plays a crucial role in the problem-solving process. Third, as found in this study, the more authority a salesperson has, the more he or she can be trusted. This finding is very important with regard to tactics. Building trust is a long-term assignment; however, when mutual trust has not been developed, suppliers can overcome the problems they encounter by empowering a salesperson with the authority to make certain decisions. This finding applies to suppliers as well.