• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.28-38
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• 2018

Purpose: To evaluate the medical expenditures for prostate cancer patients, including out-of-pocket costs, and compared the costs between androgen deprivation therapy and radical prostatectomy treatment. Methodology: This study combined clinical data from 357 prostate cancer patients from the Smart Prostate Cancer Database and the medical expenditure data from the claims and cost databases. We used the independent two-sample t-tests to compare androgen deprivation therapy and radical prostatectomy. Multivariable logistic regression analysis was conducted to identify determining factors for androgen deprivation therapy and radical prostatectomy treatments. Findings: The medical costs of androgen deprivation therapy treatment were much lower than radical prostatectomy treatment at the one year and remained lower until the fourth-year. However, after four years, the accumulated medical expenditures of androgen deprivation therapy become significantly higher than radical prostatectomy treatment. Patients with a higher cancer stage and older age had higher chances of being treated using androgen deprivation therapy treatment than radical prostatectomy treatment. Practical Implications: Our results show that early detection of cancer reduces the treatment cost for both patients and insurance payers. It also demonstrates that cost comparisons should be conducted over long periods of time in order to most accurately assess the costs.

• Korean Journal of Health Education and Promotion
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.63-71
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• 2010

Objectives: The field of health education is still relatively new and is therefore evolving and developing rapidly throughout the world. Many countries' certification programs are still being created. This paper will discuss on the US CHES system of regulation, accreditation, and implementation for the future development of international health education programs. Methods: This article focuses on the United States CHES credentialing program, specifically on its historical development and the roles, employment settings and socioeconomic demographics of current CHES professionals through literature review. Results: The roles and skills required vary by employment setting, with seven universally recognized responsibilities of health educators. There are also 35 key competencies which are crucial to the role of the health educator, with 163 sub-competencies performed by all health educators. The employment of health educators will increase from 62,000 in 2006 to 78,000 in 2016. As the costs of healthcare increase, employers are projected to hire more health educators to decrease healthcare costs through prevention and early detection of chronic illnesses. Community health non-profit agencies, academia, healthcare (hospital/clinic), schools, government/government contracting, and businesses are some of the most widespread employment settings for health educators in the United States. Conclusion: Better understanding of this longstanding and successful program will benefit countries developing their own certification system. The variety and specificity of the information on the US CHES program may be of value as South Korea continues to develop its Korean CHES program.

• Journal of East-West Nursing Research
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.157-165
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• 2019

Purpose: This study aims to provide basic data for the development of measures and promoting home health nursing by examining the current status and trends in home health nursing for long-term care (LTC) insurance beneficiaries. Methods: Secondary data, including annual LTC insurance statistics reports for 2010-2017 and LTC manpower data, were used to compute current status and trends in the provision of home health nursing. Results: Beneficiaries of home health nursing under LTC insurance, insurance-covered costs for home health nursing, home health nursing provider, and home health nursing providing institution only accounted for 3% of all insurance-covered home care services, and were on a consistent decline since 2010. In particular, vulnerable rural regions with high proportion of individuals had poor infrastructure in terms of home health nursing institutions and manpower, but had a higher home health nursing utilization rate compared to urban regions. Conclusion: In addition to measures to support home health nursing service beneficiaries, policy measures are needed to support home health nursing service personnel and institutions. Furthermore, programs to cultivate the expertise of home health nurses and improve quality of home health nursing services should be developed in order to promote home health nursing utilization in vulnerable rural regions.

• Clean Technology
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.263-272
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• 2019

Air pollutants have a high impact on everyday life as well as on human health; therefore, new technologies such as low-emission vehicles and add-on systems for air pollutant reduction are needed for our society. However, the environmental benefits and costs of those technologies are not taken into account in existing economic feasibility assessments, which is a barrier that needs to be overcome for green technology to achieve wide dissemination and fast penetration in the market. Thus, this study develops a methodology to assess the economic feasibility of an air pollutant reduction technology by taking into account the social costs from air pollutants and carries out a case study to validate the methodology. Because the social unit costs for air pollutants have not been evaluated yet in South Korea, the methodology uses the social unit costs evaluated for the European Union that are then converted to those for South Korea based on the measuring criteria for vehicle emission gases, parity purchasing price, foreign currency exchange rate, and customer price index. The social unit costs for South Korea are used to assess economic feasibility. A case study was performed to assess the economic feasibility of a dual fuel system using diesel and compressed natural gas by taking into account social costs from air pollutants as well as economic costs. This study could contribute to assessing the true economic feasibility of green technology, projects, and policy related with air pollutant reduction.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing Administration
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.20-31
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• 2015

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore ways to define the concept of health inequality. Methods: The concept analysis process by Walker and Avant was used to clarify the meaning of health inequality. Results: Defining attributes of health inequality included differences in health status between individuals or groups, infringement of fundamental rights to health, unfair use of medical services, and social discrimination. The antecedents of health inequality included differences in demographic characteristics (age, gender, education, occupation, residential location), limitations in accessibility to health care, and social exclusion. Consequences of health inequality were increased costs for medical care, decreased health-related quality of life, and lack of ability to cope with health problems resulting in crisis situations, increases in morbidity and mortality, and shortening of life span. The concept was clarified through presentation of model, borderline, related, and contrary cases. Conclusion: Results of this study can be used to guide the direction of future studies through concept analysis in which conceptual attributes in the context of health inequality are examined. Also, based on the result of this study, development of standardized tools to measure health inequality is recommended as well as development of educational programs to reduce health inequalities.

• The Journal of Korean Academic Society of Nursing Education
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.558-570
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• 2013

Purpose: In these days, the concept of health literacy becomes important because it is essential to have a clear grasp of patients' basic ability to understand health-care information. Therefore, we intended to discover attributes, antecedents and consequences of health literacy through contextual analysis. Method: Following Rodgers' evolutionary concept analysis, we did a literary review. The databases KMBase, KoreaMed, Kstudy, NDSL, and RISS were searched for articles. Among published literature about health literacy, twenty articles which satisfied the inclusion criteria were chosen. Results: Health literacy consists of three attributes: information seeking, information understanding, and information utilizing. Furthermore antecedents are as follows: health status, health belief, socioeconomic status, and information quality. Finally, we were able to explain the consequences of health literacy by showing improvement of self-care and interaction, and a decrease of social costs. Conclusion: We expect this study to guide the direction of future studies, and as a concept analysis that examines the conceptual attributes in the context of health literacy. Based on the result of this study, the design of a standardized tool and the program of health literacy promotion education need to be developed.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.155-162
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• 2020

The paper aims to examine the association between information and communication technology (ICT), economic growth and population health based on health production model in Malaysia. This theoretical health production function is represented as follows: where the output is an individual health outcome, and the inputs are determinants of health, such as income, education, health care costs, medical facilities, the environment, and lifestyle. The development of information and communication technologies are represented as of mobile cellular subscriptions (per 100) and fixed telephone subscriptions (100) using time series data from 1993-2017 from the World Bank database. Using the bound testing technique of cointegration, this study finds that ICT affects population health significantly and positively in the long- and short-run. This is because ICT inclusion improves human health and longevity. Whereas, economic growth has no significant impact on the population's health both in the short- and long-run. The findings indicate that a weak global economy affects Malaysia's economic growth and reduces the health expenditure per capita. The results of this study suggest that policymakers must develop policies that improves public health by increasing health literacy, disseminating health information and facilitating medical facilities. This study also suggests that health care systems should to concentrate on digital inclusion.

• Research in Community and Public Health Nursing
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.589-599
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• 2001

The purpose of this study was to analyze the relation amongst health status, health care costs. health service utilization among the low income elderly who were 60 years of age or older, earning a half of the average Korean family income. The cross-sectional descriptive survey research we conducted used families randomly sampled nationwide. The data were collected from July 12 to August 7, 1999 and the total sample was 1.259 household members (421 households). These were the major findings. 1. As for the health status. 72.4% of respondents fell ill in the last 1 month; 54% of respondents had chronic disease. 2. As for the health care cost. the cost of hospitalization and the medical treatment were 1.069,000 won and 226.000won. respectively. 59.3% of respondents experienced a burden from the monthly health care expenses. 3. As for the health service utilization for the last 3months. 28.5% of respondents didn't utilize the health service. In addition, 22.2% of respondents gave up a medical treatment because of economic situation (88.8%). 4. The statistically significant determinants of health service utilization are old age, female, living with a spouse, unemployed state, medicare, and more days sick. 5. It is shown conclusively that equity and efficacy of the health care policy are to be considered for lower income older adult.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.131-138
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• 2020

The purpose of this study was to compare the health status of South Korea with those of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries and examine the trends. Position vAlue for Relative Comparison (PARC) was used as a gauge for comparison, and five sectors of the health care system were measured: demand, supply, accessibility, quality, and cost. The Mann-Kendall test was used as a statistical analysis method to examine trend of PARC values obtained from 2000 to recent years. According to the results, the demand, supply, accessibility, and quality sectors were higher than the OECD average, while the cost was lower than the average. However, there is a recent trend of sharp increases in health care costs. Some indicators: health employment, quality of primary care and mental health care were lower than the OECD average, and health determinants showed a worsening trend. Therefore, policy-makers need to take this into account and make efforts for sustainable health care.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.363-369
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• 2023

The term "catastrophic health expenditure" means assessing the extent to which medical costs cause financial hardship for households. The aim of this research is to analyze the percentage of households that faced severe financial strain due to medical expenses from 2006 to 2021. This was achieved by utilizing data obtained from the National Survey of Tax and Benefit (NaSTaB), Korea Health Panel (KHP), and Households Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES). A trend analysis was conducted to examine the percentage of households that experienced catastrophic healthcare expenses. The households that experienced the catastrophic health expenditure was 2.49% in 2021 using the NaSTaB data. The trend analysis yielded a statistically significant result, indicating a decreasing trend (annual percent change [APC], -4.79; p<0.0001) in the proportion of households facing catastrophic health expenditures. Also, the results of the 2019 KHP and the 2021 HIES showed 1.09% and 2.44% for the households that experienced catastrophic health expenditure. The trend was increased according to the KHP (APC, 0.55; p=0.0004) and the HIES (APC, 7.04; p<0.0001). As a result, this study proposes that sustained attention and further interventions are necessary to ease the economic pressure caused by catastrophic health expenses, particularly for low-income households.