• Health Policy and Management
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.21-35
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• 2010

This study examined the changes in the service mix of Korean hospitals in 6 metropolitan cities between 2003 and 2005, and assessed whether the sample hospitals exhibit consistent trend or chance variation in multiple years. Three measures of hospital service mix, focusing on the specialization of services, were applied: information theory index, internal Herfindahl index, and number of distinct diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) treated. National Health Insurance claims were used to calculate the indexes. Specialization indexes were calculated in each year, and then examined to identify the pattern over time. Kappa analysis was applied to assess the agreements of specialization score between two years after hospitals were categorized into 4 groups with quartiles. Kappa score showed that the service mix of hospitals were changed during the study years. Specialization scores were increased given the market structure for three years. Hospitals which showed higher or lower specialization scores than the average of the scores consistently classified into the same group. Specialization indexes showed relatively consistent pattern over 3 years, and such consistencies were evident for hospitals regardless of the specialization status. Policy makers can identify the degree of specialization with the indexes, and it could provide a picture of how hospital services were mixed and changed over time.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.84-94
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• 2009

Purpose: This study was done to investigate community attitudes towards people with mental illness and to mental health services. Methods: From August to October of 2006, 474 citizens of Siheung city were asked to give demographic data and their personal attitude toward mental illness and mental health services. Results: The residents of Siheung community showed slightly negative attitudes, with a mean opinion about mental illness score of $93.38{\pm}17.29$. According to the study, health professionals and citizens showed a positive attitude to the establishment of day care centers and residential facilities (62.2% and 55.4% respectively). Civil servants showed negative attitudes (40.4%). There were significant differences in attitudes according to gender, age, education level, occupation, religion, and income. Positive attitudes were found for health professionals and negative attitudes for civil servants. Conclusion: The results of this study indicate a need to provide public information and education for civil servants, and for those who have negative attitudes, in particular, men, people in the younger age group, who have lower education levels, who are Buddhists, monthly renters, who have a monthly income below 1 million won, who have no children and no experience with people who have a mental illness.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.32-39
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• 2022

Background: Industrial accidents can determine the overall level and quality of the work environment in industries and companies that contribute to national economic development. Korea has transformed the country from an international aid recipient to a donor country, but it has ranked first among the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development member countries in the number of fatal industrial accidents. Little has been known about the policy effects in terms of the workers' insurance for their industrial accidents and rehabilitation. This study raises two research questions about the influence of workers' personal characteristics and vocational rehabilitation services on their return to workplaces. Methods: The study implements weighted logistic regression analysis using propensity score matching. This research utilizes the relevant dataset (3,924 persons) of Korea's industrial accident and insurance. Results: The findings show that the level of workers' awareness of health recovery and their counseling for rehabilitation by physicians had positive effects on their return to work. Environmental factors such as workers' job stability at the time of industrial accidents and the temporal effects of industrial accidents (e.g., the level of disability, their age) had negative impacts on their return to work. Conclusions: These findings have policy implications that the concentration of rehabilitation services for patients who have been mildly affected by industrial accidents would be effective in the short and medium term. The findings also highlight the necessity of ongoing policies about workers' vocational recovery with concrete evidence about policy impacts.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.23-28
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• 2017

FHIR, next-generation standard for health information exchange, allows to exchange health information fast and to provide various health services. In this paper, we propose an indexing scheme of FHIR resources for adopting the resources to wireless data broadcasting with a secure channel. That scheme keeps the information of users to support to download FHIR resources from the secure wireless broadcast channel and the information on the resources. Using the proposed index, massive users can download their desired FHIR resources with less energy in short time. With simulation studies, we show the proposed indexing scheme outperforms other scheme broadcasting FHIR resources.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.51 no.3
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• pp.140-147
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• 2018

Objectives: Environmental pollution is a negative consequence of the development process, and many countries are grappling with this phenomenon. As a developing country, Iran is not exempt from this rule, and Iran pays huge expenditures for the consequences of pollution. The aim of this study was to analyze the long- and short-run impact of air pollution, along with other health indicators, on private and public health expenditures. Methods: This study was an applied and developmental study. Autoregressive distributed lag estimating models were used for the period of 1972 to 2014. In order to determine the co-integration between health expenditures and the infant mortality rate, fertility rate, per capita income, and pollution, we used the Wald test in Microfit version 4.1. We then used Eviews version 8 to evaluate the stationarity of the variables and to estimate the long- and short-run relationships. Results: Long-run air pollution had a positive and significant effect on health expenditures, so that a 1.00% increase in the index of carbon dioxide led to an increase of 3.32% and 1.16% in public and private health expenditures, respectively. Air pollution also had a greater impact on health expenditures in the long term than in the short term. Conclusions: The findings of this study indicate that among the factors affecting health expenditures, environmental quality and contaminants played the most important role. Therefore, in order to reduce the financial burden of health expenditures in Iran, it is essential to reduce air pollution by enacting and implementing laws that protect the environment.

• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.76-83
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• 2012

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to define the underserved emergency medical services (EMS) areas in Daejeon metropolitan city, as well as to identify their distinctive characteristics in public health perspectives. Methods: An underserved EMS area was operationally defined as an area in which it is difficult to arrive at an emergency medical center within 30 minutes. Using a cost-weighted distance algorithm with a geographic information system (GIS), the underserved EMS area was calculated. The characteristics of the underserved areas were analyzed by the Chi-square test. The SPSS statistical software package was used to perform the statistical analysis. All statistical tests were two-sided, and a p-value<0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: Twelve administrative sectors ('Dong' in Korean) were included in the underserved areas, accounting for a population of approximately 8,100 citizens. The relationships between underserved EMS area and populations of agriculture, fishery, and forestry; citizens who are recipients of national basic livelihood security program; disabled; or aged 65 or older were statistically significant. Conclusion: It was found that 12 administrative sectors were included in the underserved EMS areas. Revealing underserved EMS areas using GIS analysis based on a cost-weighted distance algorithm of road data was an effective analytic method. However, as this study was confined to Daejeon City, South Korea, a nation-wide study should be performed to provide a more accurate conclusion.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.5-26
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• 1999

In recent years there has been an increasing amount of attention paid to outosourcing of information systems (IS) functions in organizations. The changing and more strategic role of outsourcing in business firms has been given much coverage in academic and trade publications. Trying to remain competitive and up-to-date in the rapidly developing world of computer technology is becoming a financial burden to many organizations in fields such as banking and financial services, health care, and manufacturing. Hiring outsiders to handle part or even all of its information services helps an organization provide better services and maintain a competitive advantage. This paper attempts to provide a benchmark of current IS outsourcing utilization in Korea. A detailed descriptive analysis of survey responses from 78 Korean companies indicates the usage, length of experience, expenditure of outsourcing, and kinds of IS functions being outsourced. The study also analyzes the effects (strategic, economic, and technological) of IS outsourcing with respect to the length of experience, expenditure of outsourcing, and kinds of IS functions being outsourced As a result of the analysis there are significant differences in the strategic, economic and technological effects of IS outsourcing with respect to the expenditure of outsourcing, kinds of IS functions being outsourced and firm size.

• Research in Community and Public Health Nursing
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.390-397
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• 2015

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore practice-based evidence for health promotion in vulnerable populations with hypertension in primary health care settings. Methods: Two methodological procedures were adopted for this triangulation study. In the first phase, the sample was obtained from the computerized clinical data repository of a community nursing center. A total of 286 clients were assessed for hypertension as an actual circulation problem as coded in the Omaha System. In the second phase, a qualitative focus group was surveyed through semi-structured interviews conducted by nine advanced practice nurses who had been serving the hypertensive patients. Results: The community nurses provided essential primary healthcare services including health teaching guidance and counseling, and surveillance to vulnerable populations living in medically underserved community. There was a significant positive correlation between knowledge and behavior (r=.53, p<.01), between knowledge and health status (r=.40, p<.05), and between behavior and health status (r=.48, p<.01). Conclusion: This triangulation study encompassed not only quantitative findings from the computerized records of clients but also other information acquired from advanced practice nurses. This study contributes to understanding the importance of health promotion nursing interventions even with populations already diagnosed with chronic diseases such as hypertension.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.437-441
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• 2012

Objective: Health risk appraisal is often utilized to modify individual's health behavior, especially concerning disease prevention, and web-based health risk appraisal services are being provided to the general public in Korea. However, little is known about the psychological effect of the health risk appraisal even though poorly communicated information by the web-based service may result in unintended adverse health outcomes. This study was conducted to explore the psychological effect of health risk appraisal using epidemiological risk factor profile. Methods: We conducted a randomized trial comparing risk factor list type health risk appraisal and risk score type health risk appraisal. We studied 60 women aged 30 years and older who had no cancer. Anxiety level was assessed using the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory YZ. Results: The results of multivariate analysis showed that risk status was the independent predictors of increase of state anxiety after health risk appraisal intervention when age, education, health risk appraisal type, numeracy, state anxiety, trait anxiety, and health risk appraisal type by risk status interaction was adjusted. Women who had higher risk status had an odd of having increased anxiety that was about 5 times greater than women who had lower risk status. Conclusions: Our findings indicate that communicating the risk status by individual health risk appraisal service can induce psychological sequelae, especially in women having higher risk status. Hospitals, institutes, or medical schools that are operating or planning to operate the online health risk appraisal service should take side effects such as psychological sequelae into consideration.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.251-260
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• 2010

Through the convergence of medical services and the IT technique, the patient's personal health information computerization has been rapidly spread with propagation of electronic medical record(EHR). In addition, by entering u-health, the demand of the secondary use for public health, medical research, and medical service using electronic patient health care records are increasing. The personal health information secondary uses for the development of academic medical area and service, are very good thing. But, carelessly to use personal health information, the patient privacy would be damaged. However, there are not yet systematic studies about secondary use of personal health information. Therefore, in this paper, we analyze the difference of the internal and external bill for personal medical data secondary use and propose the direction of the medical service development and preservation of the individual's privacy.