• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.129-155
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• 2000

This empirical study, activity-based costing, a newly introduced approach that has proved to be an improvement over the conventional costing system in product or service costing, is applied at department of clinical pathology in K university hospital. The study subjects were 233 test procedures done in clinical laboratory of K university hospital. Activity analysis was done by interview, questionnaires, and time study, and the amount of resources consumed by each activity and their costs are then traced and applied to the laboratory tests. The main purpose of this study were to compare the test costs of activity-bases costing with those of conventional costing, and test fees of medical insurance, and to provide accurate cost informations for the decision makers of hospital. The major findings of this study were as belows. 1. The cost drivers for application of activity-based costing at clinical laboratory were cases of sample collection, case of specimen, cases of test, and volume-related allocation bases such as direct labor hours and total revenue of each test. 2. The profits of each clinical laboratory fields analyzed by conventional costing were different from the profits analyzed by activity-based costing, especially in the field of Urinalysis(approximately over estimated 750%). 3. The standard full costs by conventional costing were quite different from the costs computed by using activity-based costing, and the difference is most significant with the tests of long labor time. 4. From the comparison between costs computed by using activity-based costing and medical insurance fees, some test fees were significantly lower than the costs, especially in the non-automated fields. As described in this study, activity-based costing provides more accurate cost information than does conventional costing system. The former approach is especially important in the health care industry including hospitals in which planning and controlling the costs services provided are the key to maintaining a healthy financial status for the organization. Despite the contribution of activity-based costing the economic as well as technical feasibilities of implementing such a cost accounting system in an organization must be evaluated. In the development of activity-based costing systems, an activity analysis has to be conducted to identify activities that consume resources. This involves a detailed study of the organization's logistics and accounting information systems, and it is an expensive project in itself. Besides, it can be quite difficult and time consuming to identify and trace resource consumption to a specific activity. Thus the activity-based costing system should be implemented only when the decrease in cost of error far exceeds the increase in cost of measurement. By combining activity-based costing with standard costing, health care administrators can better plan and control the costs of health services provided while ensuring that the organization's bottom line is healthy.

• Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society
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• v.61 no.2
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• pp.212-218
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• 2018

Objective : Surgical clipping of the cerebral aenurysm is considered as a standard therapy with endovascular coil embolization. The surgical clipping is known to be superior to the endovascular coil embolization in terms of recurrent rate. However, a recurrent aneurysm which is initially treated by surgical clipping is difficult to handle. The purpose of this study was to research the management of the recurrent cerebral aneurysm after a surgical clipping and how to overcome them. Methods : From January 1996 to December 2015, medical records and radiologic findings of 14 patients with recurrent aneurysm after surgical clipping were reviewed retrospectively. Detailed case-by-case analysis was performed based on preoperative, postoperative and follow-up radiologic examinations and operative findings. All clinical variables including age, sex, aneurysm size and location, type and number of applied clips, prognosis, and time to recurrence are evaluated. All patients are classified by causes of the recurrence. Possible risk factors that could contribute to those causes and overcoming ways are comprehensively discussed. Results : All recurrent aneurysms after surgical clipping were 14 of 2364 (0.5%). Three cases were males and 11 cases were females. Mean age was 52.3. At first treatment, nine cases were ruptured aneurysms, four cases were unruptured aneurysms, and one case was unknown. Locations of recurrent aneurysm were determined; anterior communicating artery (A-com) (n=7), posterior communicating artery (P-com) (n=3), middle cerebral artery (n=2), anterior cerebral artery (n=1) and basilar artery (n=1). As treatment of the recurrence, 11 cases were treated by surgical clipping and three cases were treated by endovascular coil embolization. Three cases of all 14 cases occurred in a month after the initial treatment. Eleven cases occurred after a longer interval, and three of them occurred after 15 years. By analyzing radiographs and operative findings, several main causes of the recurrent cerebral aneurysm were found. One case was incomplete clipping, five cases were clip slippage, and eight cases were fragility of vessel wall near the clip edge. Conclusion : This study revealed main causes of the recurrent aneurysm and contributing risk factors to be controlled. To manage those risk factors and ultimately prevent the recurrent aneurysm, neurosurgeons have to be careful in the technical aspect during surgery for a complete clipping without a slippage. Even in a perfect surgery, an aneurysm may recur at the clip site due to a hemodynamic change over years. Therefore, all patients must be followed up by imaging for a long period of time.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.105 no.2
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• pp.238-246
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• 2016

The study aims to examine Japan's National REDD+ Strategies prepared for Post-2020 and the status of its implementation by organizations in Japan, and then to suggest the potential REDD+ countermeasures against Joint Credit Mechanism (JCM) for Republic of Korea and their implications. As for the technical limitations of the guidelines of REDD+ under the JCM, it is pointed out that forests located at the place with less potential safeguard intervention tend to be selected as the target area for a project and that, as reference emission trend changes depending on the basic year of the baseline, differences could occur among the amounts of greenhouse gas emission. In addition, it is pointed out that the result of the calculation of the displacement of emissions, or leakeage, in REDD+, can have an uncertainty, since the calculation is done by just multiplying leakage area by certain coefficients, without considering the size of the leakage area. Furthermore, the lack of implementation guideline or methodologies for a project level is also pointed out as a limitation, considering that there are only some national and sub-national monitoring guidelines at present. Finally, internationally accepted guidelines for safeguard and its sub-items needed to be prepared, as current safeguard policy only includes lists without detailed items. Such things mentioned above are all related to, and can lead to the problem of double counting of items in Nested Approach etc., as well as of the distribution of credits. Therefore, Republic of Korea should take these into consideration when implementing its REDD+ projects.