Quality of care and patient safety have become today's agenda for healthcare industry in worldwide. This paper describes experiences to improve quality of care and patient safety in USA and identifies some future tasks for better implementation of quality improvement efforts. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for Korean healthcare system.

The main objectives of this study are to compare the regional differences and to analyse the affecting factors of customer satisfaction. The subjects are 9 hospitals(5 Daegu region, 4 Seoul region) patient satisfaction index that were surveyed the 2004 Hospital Accreditation Program performed by KHIDI(Korea Health Industry Development Institute) and MOHW(Ministry of Health and Welfare). The sample used in this study consisted of 450 inpatients and 454 outpatients. The survey instrument is composed of physical environment items, physician factors, nursing staff factors, ancillary staff factors, administrative procedure items, and quality of hospital stay items. And overall satisfaction, intent to revisit, and intent to recommend as dependent variables are measured. Basically, the reliability and validity of survey items was evaluated. And the T-test was performed to compare regional differences of customer satisfaction. Finally to analyse the affecting factors on overall satisfaction, and customer loyalty(intent to revisit and intent to recommend), the multiple regression analysis was used. This study shows firstly, the Daegu region's patient satisfaction level of inpatients and outpatients is lower than Seoul region. Especially, nursing staff factors and quality of hospital stay items are very low on inpatient's satisfaction. Also all independent variables except the sufficiency of goods in hospital stand are very low on outpatient's satisfaction. Secondly, as a result of multiple regression analysis, ancillary staff factors(Beta=0.281) have a significant effect on overall satisfaction of inpatient cases in Daegu region. In regard to intent to revisit and intent to recommend, physical environment factors have a significant effect. Thirdly, in Seoul region, physical environment factors(Beta=0.430) have a significant effect on overall satisfaction of inpatient cases. In regard to intent to revisit and intent to recommend, administrative procedure items and nursing staff factors have a significant effect, respectively. In conclusion, these results indicate that hospitals in Daegu region make an effort to improve the customer satisfaction level, especially, of physical environment factors on inpatients and administrative procedure factors on outpatients

This paper presents an analysis of the current status of domestic hospital industry which went trough the time of new hospitals operated by chaebols from 1994 to 2003 and the dramatic changes of medical service environment such as IMF relief loan in 1997 and the separation of prescription and dispensing (SPD) in 2000. For the sake of righteous policy-making in the future, this paper presents a productivity analysis of the management and administration of 38 tertiary hospitals nationwide in the past 10 years. The analysis is based on the Malmquist index approach using linear programming. d prepare a productivity index that measures not merely efficiency but the technological evolution and adjustment to changing environments.

The research objective is to empirically investigate the compensation packages maximizing the utilities of internal customers by applying the market segmentation theory. Data was collected from four Korean hospitals in Seoul, Busan and Gyunggi-do. The research is designed to seek the compensation package maximizing the utility of doctors by mixture regression model, which has been applied as latent structure and other type of finite mixture models from various academic fields since early 1980s. The mixture regression model shows the optimal segments number and fuzzy classification for each observation by EM(expectation-maximization algorism). The finite mixture regression model is to unmix the sample, to identify the groups, and to estimate the parameters of the density function underlying the observed data within each group. The doctors were segmented into 5 groups by their preference for the compensation package. The results of this study imply that the utility of doctors increases with differentiated compensation package segmented by their preference.

The purpose of this study is to develop a framework for evaluating security levels in hospitals. We classify security indicators into administrative, technical and physical safeguards. The security evaluation model for hospital information systems was applied to three general hospitals. The analysis of the results showed a low security level in information systems. In particular, requirements for administrative and physical safeguards were very low. Hospitals need strict security policies more than other organizations because their information systems contain patients' highly confidential data. The evaluation model developed in this study can be used for guidelines and as a checklist for hospitals. The security evaluation in hospital informational systems needs to be an essential element of hospital evaluation.