초록
Objectives : Health cooperative movement is of increasing concern among medical consumers and professionals in Korea. Most health cooperative clinics provide Western Medicine and Korean Medicine(KM) to patients. This study aimed to evaluate the primary care level of health cooperative KM clinics and compare it with local KM clinics in Korea. Methods : Face to face survey was performed at the 3 health cooperative KM clinics and 5 local KM clinics with the Korean Primary Care Assessment Tool (KPCAT). The KPCAT consists of 5 domains (21 items): first contact (5), coordination function (3), comprehensiveness (4), family/community orientation (4), and personalized care (5). Subjects were patients or guardians who had visited KM clinics five times or more during the last 3 months. We compared primary care scores of each domain between health cooperative KM clinics and local KM clinics. Results : Data were collected from 200 respondents (100 patients from health cooperative KM clinics and 100 local KM clinics). Total average scores of the KPCAT for health cooperative clinics and local KM clinics were $81.1{\pm}12.0$ and $75.4{\pm}9.5$, respectively. Among primary care domains, personalized care was the highest ($89.2{\pm}12.0$, $89.6{\pm}8.4$, respectively), and comprehensiveness function was the lowest ($68.5{\pm}22.5$, $54.5{\pm}22.0$, respectively). Significant differences between two groups were noted in comprehensiveness function (68.5 vs. 54.5, P=0.000), family-community orientation (79.5 vs. 73.0, P=0.004), first contact(89.2 vs 84.0, p=0.001) and coordination function(74.0 vs 68.7, p=0.025). Conclusions : Based on the patients assessment, health cooperative KM clinics provide more primary care-oriented services than local KM clinics. This means that health cooperative clinic can be one of alternatives to strengthen the primary health care in Korea. Future researches are recommended to measure patients satisfaction and treatment effectiveness in the health cooperative clinics.
