• The Korean Journal of Emergency Medical Services
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.91-111
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• 2023

Purpose: This study aims to compare 119 emergency medical services (EMS) in South Korea and Japan to provide essential data for EMS improvement in South Korea. Methods: Recent data and regulations on firefighting and EMS in South Korea and Japan were analyzed and compared. Results: South Korea follows a centralized approach to EMS, whereas Japan operates with autonomous bodies that establish their own criteria. Japan considers more regional variables than South Korea. In South Korea, there are shortages in fire station deployment among the 119 emergency medical resources in certain regions, leading to significant regional disparities. South Korea has a larger population served by its 119 emergency medical resources with a higher workload and dispatch numbers than Japan. The percentage of non-transported patients among the total number of dispatches was higher in South Korea. Conclusion: Increasing the number of medical professionals and ambulances per population to the level of Japan to reflect local conditions and include various underlying variables such as daytime population, aging, and emergency dispatch conditions in the deployment of 119 emergency resources, and to reduce the deployment gap between regions, will contribute to improving the performance of the South Korea EMS system.

• The Korean Journal of Emergency Medical Services
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.67-76
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• 2020

Purpose: Effective time management, as well as life-saving care, are important in maximizing the prognosis of patients who have sustained major traumas. This study evaluated the appropriateness of emergency medical system (EMS) provider's essential care and how this care impacted on-scene time in patients with major traumas. Methods: This retrospective observational study analyzed the EMS major trauma documents, classified according to the physiological criteria (Glasgow coma scale <14, systolic blood pressure <90mmHg, Respiration rate <10 or >29) in Daejeon, from January, 2015 to December, 2018. Results: Of the 707 major trauma cases, the mean on-scene time was 7.75±4.64 minutes. According to EMS guidelines, essential care accuracy was 67.5% for basic airway, 36.4% for advanced airway, 91.2% for cervical collar, 81.5% for supplemental oxygen, 47.0% for positive pressure ventilation, 19.9% for intravenous access and fluid administration, and 96.0% for external hemorrhage control. Factors affecting on-scene time were positive pressure ventilation (p<.004), and intravenous access and fluid administration (p<.002). Conclusion: Adherence to guidelines was low during advanced airway procedures, positive pressure ventilation, intravenous access, and fluid administration. In addition, the on-scene time was prolonged when the practitioner provided positive pressure ventilation, intravenous access, and fluid administration; however, these durations did not exceed the recommended 10 minutes.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.1-3
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• 2024

Currently, the issue of poor accessibility to essential medical services has been brought to light as a social discontent. In order to strengthen the essential medical service system, the government has announced the "the policy package related to essential medical service" as a comprehensive solution and has vowed to invest more than 10 trillion won by 2028. As it contains crucial elements for changing the framework of the healthcare system, I would like to present several points to consider in policy implementation. Given that this package contains important elements for changing the framework of the healthcare system, there are a few issues to consider in policy implementation. First, a mechanism to prevent politicization should be established when designing the physician training system. Second, changing from a hospital centered on residents to one centered on specialists means that the society bears the cost of training residents, while paying a high price for specialist services. The willingness of society to pay for the costs incurred by such a change should be carefully considered, and an appropriate budget must be prepared. Third, as the operation of shared human resources and inter-organizational networking, among other detailed policy measures, are still at a level of conceptual discussion, various issues should be solidly reviewed and considered for in the mid to long term to suit the conditions of the domestic healthcare system.

• The Korean Journal of Emergency Medical Services
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.19-38
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• 2021

Purpose: This study aimed to investigate the relationship between emergency medical service accessibility in different regions and the sudden death rate in elderly patients with ischemic heart disease using data analysis techniques and suggest improvements in regional emergency medical services. Methods: The study collected data from the NEDIS database and Statistics Korea. Data on a total of 75,867 patients aged ≥65 years were reviewed among patients with ischemic heart disease who visited emergency medical institutions in 2018. Frequency analysis, chi-square test, multiple logistic regression analysis, and simple logistic regression analysis were performed using SPSS PC Window 25.0. Results: With an emergency medical resource per 100km², there was a concomitant reduction in the risk of death. There was a decrease in the death rate by 0.967, 0.970, 0.997, and 0.391 times with the increase in the presence of a fire department, an ambulance, a paramedic, and a regional medical center, respectively. Furthermore, a decrement in the death rate was witnessed 0.844, 0.825, and 0.975 times with the initiation of a local emergency medical center, a local emergency medical institution, and an angiography device, respectively(p <.001). Conclusion: To improve the accessibility of emergency medical services, the population and geometric area of the region should be considered essential factors when deploying emergency medical resources.

• The Korean Journal of Emergency Medical Services
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.27-40
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• 2007

Even now, 119 rescue services have dissatisfactory aspects in operation, system and equipments as discussed above, It is the most urgent subject to systemize rescue services so that they can be suitable for our status, for we will make 21C welfare state come true before long. So, this author suggest that the followings have to be raised to activate 119 rescue service. 1) Bring up experts and offer high-quality rescue service 2) Prepare more up-to-date equipments 3) Operate transfer joint organizations 4) Promote the ability to meet with a press at the time of rescue service activities 5) Adjust regulations related to rescue services 6) Make up for a countermeasure to traffic accidents of ambulances 7) Adjust regulations making it mandatory to establish heliport at the target on hospitals more than a defined scale 8) Install more rescue service teams 9) Educate and train officials belonging to briefing rooms, where the officials with long experiences are arranged 10) Minimize the time for rescue team to reach fields 11) Establish legal protection system for rescue the team Nowadays, our country operates the department of fire fighting and rescue services without great difficulty, even though the circumstances are bad - insufficient members and the inferior circumstances. All of the fire fighting officials are given heavy duties in bad circumstances, and so are the team of rescue service. The rescue service team, taking charge of some emergency medical system, do a fire fighting inspection as a non-duty service, though they are scanty of sleep due to prevention and protection services of the fire fighting service team. But, they can not engage in rescue services completely and have to deal with miscellaneous duties. So they can not offer professional emergency medical services. But now, almost every fire fighting organization, belonging to National Emergency Management Agency, are separating rescue services, which shows a lot of good results. People recognize rescue services to get better and better gradually and the demands for this rescue services increase. So, this is the best time when rescue service teams should offer qualitative services rather than quantitative services. The people will recognize this rescue service team to be an organization sacrificing and serving for them. However well institutes and operation systems should be established, the rescue service team can not come true their aim without strong wills that they will serve and sacrifice themselves for people from their hearts. In addition, it is essential for the officials in charge of policies about emergency medical services to have a concernment on and practice the policy without failure.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.3-13
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• 2022

Health centers provided intensive health care services for local residents according to changes in the times and environment. Public health centers were given various roles such as medical treatment, administration, and service, and the demand for functional reorganization has emerged. We analyzed the literature on the functional restructuring of public health care institutions. In addition, the current status of medical services, which is the main function of institutions, will be analyzed through health insurance statistical data, and detailed contents will be analyzed according to regional types and income levels. As a result of the analysis of medical services at institutions, the total number of patients was 2,238,000, and the number of visits was 11,806 times. Total medical expenses were 169.6 billion won, of which 132 billion won was found to be benefit. When analyzing the number of patients per institution, public health centers had the largest number of 4,326, and the share of benefit was also the highest at public health centers. It should focus on the function of providing local health and medical services related to health promotion and disease prevention in the community. This functional reorganization of public health centers can contribute to forming cooperative relationships with private medical institutions in the local community. For this, first, to establish the role, essential functions for public health centers for preventive health management are established. Secondly, regular manpower expansion and flexible manpower management are required in the human resources sector. Finally, in the organizational sector, it is necessary to establish a step-by-step organizational system according to environmental changes.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.123-133
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• 2001

Medical domain is very applicable for multi-agent system because medical information systems need much knowledge and close relationship with medical staff, In this paper, we describe design and implementation of an intelligent medical multi-agent platform that provides medical images'information services. This platform supports a physical environment that medical agents can be deployed following FIPA(Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agent)\`s agent management reference model. To use a variety of components on Windows, COM(Common Object Model) interfaces and XML(extensible Markup Language) for encoding ACL(Agent Communication Language) are used for multi-agent communications. Since many kinds of diverse and close relationships with medical staff) are essential, a medical staff is conceptualized as an agent and integrated with multi-agent systems. Also it provides an infrastructure applicable to share necessary knowledge between human agents and software agents in order to make intelligent medical information services easier.

• Research in Community and Public Health Nursing
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.24-39
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• 2021

Purpose: This study was to review the previous studies on the 'Willingness to Pay (WTP)' for healthcare services and suggest future implications for nursing research. Methods: Using the scoping review method, we used RISS, KISS, KMbase, Koreamed, PubMed, EMbase, CINAHL as searching engines. According to the selection and exclusion criteria, 40 appropriate studies were selected and analyzed. Results: 24 studies were categorized into medical service field among medical, public health, and nursing service fields. A total of 16 studies were related to healthcare system (policies), 13 studies were to the healthcare intervention, and 11 studies were categorized into the health management. Most of the methods for eliciting WTP (70%) were about a contingent valuation method (CVM), and the use of double bounded dichotomous choice (DBDC) tended to increase. In the nursing field, five WTP studies were identified: two studies published in the early years of 2000, which were conducted on hospital-based home health visit services. Recent studies were mostly about counseling and education by advanced practice nurses (APNs). Conclusion: WTP studies on healthcare services were largely published from the medical fields and health policy areas with the CVM method. In the field of nursing, studies have been conducted on the subject of limited service areas. More active exploration of research topics is required, particularly under the current policy setting, where discussion of the public health insurance fee for nursing practice is essential.

• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.296-310
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• 1998

Background : Performance evaluation of medical care providers has become more important than before in Korea. Especially in university hospitals, job contents of medical staffs are so complicated that evaluation is not easily performed. In addition, in order that the feedback of evaluation be successful, acceptance of staffs to be evaluated is essential. This study is aimed at the development of items for evaluation and weighting of each item in one university hospital, and clustering departments by different weight given by medical staffs. Methods : Through resource group meeting. performance items were listed up by categories of education, research, medical services, and other activities in and out of the hospital. For each item, all the medical staffs were asked how important they thought, compared with publishing one original article. By factor analysis, the items in each category were grouped into a few subgroups. In turn, cluster analysis was done for the purpose of grouping departments by priority the medical staffs gave. Results and Conclusion : Among five major categories, medical staffs regard education, research, and medical services more important than other activities in and out of the hospital. Five categories consisted of two or three components. Departments in hospital were grouped into three. However, characteristics of each group was not clearly delineated. This result suggests that more comprehensive tool should be developed and applied in the process of performance evaluation in university hospitals.

• 대한예방의학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1994.02b
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• pp.84-86
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• 1994

AS A SOCIETY, we are in conflict with ourselves about the cost of health care. 1 On one hand, we want the best care possible, regardless of cost. On the other hand, we are not willing to pay the cost of the care we want. Our conflict parallels a flaw in the medical marketplace. An essential condition for achieving an equilibrium between cost and value is that the two must be connected through decisions. When people decide what products and services (goods) they want, they must not only see the value they will receive, but they mast also be responsible for the costs. Because of a variety of features of the medical marketplace-most notably third-party coverage, third-party advice, and uncertainty about outcomes-the required connection between value and cost is severed. The result is what we see. One side of our collective mind demands more services while the other side cries that costs are too high. Resolving our conflict will require connecting value to cost. An essential step in accomplishing this will be to incorporate costs in practice policies. 1 As controversial as that thought might seem (the great majority of practice policies currently do not take costs into account except in the most rudimentary way), arriving at the conclusion is the easy part. A more difficult issue is how to implement the goal of connecting value to cost. Suppose we agree that, in principle, costs should be considered when practice policies are designed, and that an activity should be recommended and covered only if its health outcomes (benefits minus hanns) are deemed to be worth its costs. The next questions are, Who should do the deeming? What should the deemers be asked?