• Journal of Korean Clinical Nursing Research
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.123-137
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• 2011

Purpose: This study was conducted to develop standards ensuring nursing process-based care of patient admission and discharge, to develop a performance measurement tool evaluating the care applied according to the standards, and finally to determine validity of the standards and the tool. Methods: The standards and the tool were reviewed by a panel of experts and refined based on the panel's suggestions. Validity of the standards and the tool were examined through surveying a total of 302 hospital nurses. Results: The mean validity scores of the performance measurement standards and the tool were 4.11 and 4.09, respectively, out of 5.00. So the performance measurement standards and the tool in this study were found to be acceptable in evaluating quality of nursing care provided at patient admission and discharge. Conclusion: This result indicates that the performance measurement standards and the tool developed in this study are valid instruments to monitor and improve quality of nursing care for patient admission and discharge.

• Journal of Korean Clinical Nursing Research
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.5-23
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• 2010

Purpose: This study was conducted to determine the validity and reliability of performance measurement tools based on the nursing process for prevention and management of pressure ulcers, falls and pain. Methods: The performance measurement tools were reviewed by a panel of experts and refined on the basis of the panel's suggestions. The validity of the performance measurement tools was measured by surveying hospital nurses. The reliability of these tools was tested by having nursing experts use the tools in five nursing units to assess nursing performance in prevention and management of pressure ulcers, falls and pain. Results: The performance measurement tools in this study were found to be acceptable as tools to evaluate quality of nursing care in pressure ulcers, falls and pain. The reliability of the performance measurement tools was acceptable. Conclusion: These results indicate that the performance measurement tools developed in this study are valid and reliable instruments to monitor and improve quality of nursing care in prevention and management of pressure ulcers, falls and pain.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.58-67
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• 2023

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to analyze the factors associated with long-term hospitalized patients in long-term care hospitals using the quality assessment data for long-term care hospitals by the Health Insurance Review. Methods: Among 1,376 long-term care hospitals, frequency analysis and descriptive statistics were used to analyze the characteristics of these hospitals. Multiple linear regression was conducted to examine the associations between infrastructure characteristics, medical personnel characteristics, health outcomes and the proportion of long-term hospitalized patients. Results: The research findings indicate that the number of patients per doctor, the number of patients per nurse, and the number of patients per nursing staff were positively associated with the proportion of long-term hospitalized patients. Among health outcomes, a higher proportion of patients with more than a 5% weight loss compared to the previous month and the proportion of patients showing improvement in ADL, were more likely to have a lower proportion of long-term hospitalized patients. However the proportion of diabetic patients with HbA1c test results within the appropriate range was positively associated with the proportion of long-term hospitalized patients. Conclusion: The present study results provide fundamental data for the establishment of policies for long-term care hospitals. Based on this study, it is important to suggest screening methods for unnecessary long-term hospitalizations, such as sufficient medical personnel to improve the quality of care in long-term care hospitals. It is also necessary to clearly separate the roles of medical institutions and long-term care facilities and implement policies to support patients' social reintegration.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.99-128
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• 2008

Nearly all Koreans are insured through National Health Insurance(NHI). While NHI coverage is nearly universal, it is not complete. Coverage is largely limited to minimal level of hospital and physician expenses, and copayments are required in each case. As a result, Korea's public insurance system covers roughly 50% of overall individual health expenditures, and the remaining 50% consists of copayments for basic services, spending on services that are either not covered or poorly covered by the public system. In response to these gaps in the public system, 64% of the Korean population has supplemental private health insurance. Expansion of private health insurance raises negative externality issue. Like public financing schemes in other countries, the Korean system imposes cost-sharing on patients as a strategy for controlling utilization. Because most insurance policies reimburse patients for their out-of-pocket payments, supplemental insurance is likely to negate the impact of the policy, raising both total and public sector health spending. So far, most empirical analysis of supplemental health insurance to date has focused on the US Medigap programme. It is found that those with supplements apparently consume more health care. Two reasons for higher health care consumption by those with supplements suggest themselves. One is the moral hazard effect: by eliminating copayments and deductibles, supplements reduce the marginal price of care and induce additional consumption. The other explanation is that supplements are purchased by those who anticipate high health expenditures - adverse effect. The main issue addressed has been the separation of the moral hazard effect from the adverse selection one. The general conclusion is that the evidence on adverse selection based on observable variables is mixed. This article investigates the extent to which private supplementary insurance affect use of health care services by public health insurance enrollees, using Korean administrative data and private supplements related data collected through all relevant private insurance companies. I applied a multivariate two-part model to analyze the effects of various types of supplements on the likelihood and level of public health insurance spending and estimated marginal effects of supplements. Separate models were estimated for inpatients and outpatients in public insurance spending. The first part of the model estimated the likelihood of positive spending using probit regression, and the second part estimated the log of spending for those with positive spending. Use of a detailed information of individuals' public health insurance from administration data and of private insurance status from insurance companies made it possible to control for health status, the types of supplemental insurance owned by theses individuals, and other factors that explain spending variations across supplemental insurance categories in isolating the effects of supplemental insurance. Data from 2004 to 2006 were used, and this study found that private insurance increased the probability of a physician visit by less than 1 percent and a hospital admission by about 1 percent. However, supplemental insurance was not found to be associated with a bigger health care service utilization. Two-part models of health care utilization and expenditures showed that those without supplemental insurance had higher inpatient and outpatient expenditures than those with supplements, even after controlling for observable differences.

• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.45-54
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• 2022

Purpose: The study aims to identify the theme list and priority criteria of patient safety theme reports in South Korea. Methods: The survey was conducted twice, and the importance of each criterion and theme was measured on a nine-point scale using the Delphi technique by a panel of 19 patient safety experts. The criteria included severity, universality, preventability, and organizational-social impact. Descriptive statistics such as frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, median, and interval quartile range were used to analyze the data. Results: The parameters were assigned a weighted average of 35% for severity, 20% for universality, 30% for preventability, and 15% for organizational-social impact, respectively. The final top three rankings were surgery safety, blood transfusion safety, and medication safety. In addition to expert opinion, for the theme that is selected based on the priority ranking, one to five sub-topics can be derived from the theme based on the priority ranking, societal demands, or the yearly priority list of patient safety incidents. Conclusion: It is recommended that the official patient safety center distribute the report in the form of a summary that can be utilized nationwide at medical institutions, government institutions, and other places. Updates, as well as accumulated theme reports, will serve as the baseline data for the proposal of the system and for the policy designed to implement and improve institutions' safety practices as a standard of domestic patient safety practice guidelines.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.14 no.7
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• pp.3390-3399
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to examine the incidence rates of pressure ulcers depending on the types of healthcare organizations and to determine whether the characteristics of patients and facilities influence on the incidence of pressure ulcers in long term facilities. We analyzed data on 796,857 patients of the 2009 National Patient Sample which was extracted from to claims for medical fees to Health Insurance Review & Assesment Service(HIRA). A total of 3.2% of patients(n=25,339) had at least 1 pressure ulcer during their hospitalization. The pressure ulcer rates were highest in long term care facilities(8.2%, n=11,895) following general hospital(2.7%, n=8,052), hospital(1.7%, n= 5,059). According to logistic regression analysis, urinary incontinence (Odds ratio(OR)=2.462, 95% confidence interval(CI)=2.038-2.974), hypertension(OR=1.456, CI=1.400-1.515), peripheral vessel diseases (OR=1.357, CI=1.200-1.534) were significant predictors of pressure ulcers. As the number of diagnoses, age, and the number of doctors per 100 beds increased, the incidence of pressure ulcers increased. In addition, more number of beds was associated with fewer pressure ulcers.

• Journal of Cadastre & Land InformatiX
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.267-276
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• 2017

Damages have occurred in various fields such as agriculture, industry, and citizen's health due to the yellow dust. Therefore, it is urgent to take measures against it. In this regard, this study collected data of yellow dust over 11 days on a basis of Feb. 23. 2015 when yellow dust was the greatest after 2009, issue words analysis and recomposed health related tweet data. After testing the significance of yellow dust related diseases by association rule analysis with diseases, it obtained the study results as follows: As a result of significance test for the patients with rhinitis, asthma and conjunctivitis by acquiring the condition data of patients from the Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service, conjunctivitis appeared to be significant in 13 cities for 16 cities at 5% significance probability, while asthma and rhinitis showed a significance in 3 and 6 areas. As described above, it is possible to obtain information about citizens' health from SNS data, such as Tweet data and it is judged that these data will provide useful information for establishing measures of citizens' health care.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.14 no.10
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• pp.562-569
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• 2014

The purpose of this study was to investigate the determinants of total payment for mental and behavioral disorders patients admitted through the emergency room. Study data was selected from the Korean National Health Insurance sample data in 2009. This data was consisted of 753 inpatients who are 331 inpatients with only main sick(F31-F39) and 422 inpatients with main sick codes(F31-F39) and sub sick(F00-F99) admitted through the emergency room. SPSS v.18 was used for the statistical analysis such as descriptive analysis, t-test, ANOVA, and multiple regression analysis. In multiple regression analysis, significant variables affecting total payment of main sick patients were gender(p<.01), treatment result(p<.001), path of the emergency room(p<.001), and length of stay(p<.001). Also, main sick patients with sub sick were gender(p<.01), age(p<.001), treatment result(p<.001), path of the emergency room(p<.001), and length of stay(p<.001). These findings implied that it is necessary to build short, middle, and longterm program and system for high risk mental and behavioral disorders groups.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.112-123
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• 2013

Background: Under the risk of financial sustainability of National Health Insurance, Korean government attempted a series of regulations over pharmaceutical prices. The first price-cut was implemented to the hyperlipidemial treatments, and the prices of statins were reduced on 15th, April in 2009. The purposes of this study are 1) to investigate the impact of this price-cut on pharmaceutical expenditure, and 2) to identify the factors associated with drug-switch among statins. Methods: Using the national patients sample data, this study conducted time series analysis on the expenditures, prices, and volumes of statin drugs. To understand the factors associated with drug-switch, the multinomial logit model was analyzed at the patients level. Results: The results of time series analysis demonstrated that the price-cut of hyperlipidemic medicines did not lead to the reduced expenditure, suggesting the increased volume was the major cause. The multinomial logit analysis identified the switch of healthcare provider as the significant factor that was highly associated with drug-switch, implying the physicians' preference was the major motivation of drug-switch. Conclusion: Without control of utilization, price regulation itself could not reduce pharmaceutical expenditure. This suggests that the pharmaceutical regulations should be implemented on the basis of understanding of provider behaviors. The findings of this study will form the first step for further empirical studies.

• Journal of Oriental Neuropsychiatry
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.135-144
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• 2018

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to analyze the medical cost for patients with vertigo and to examine associations between chronic vertigo and mental disorder using 2014 Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service-National Patients Sample (HIRA-NPS). Methods: We analyzed sociodemographic characteristics, medical cost and medical care use pattern for vertigo patients. We used hierarchical multiple logistic regression analysis to examine odds ratio between chronic vertigo and mental disorder. Results: A total of 46,502 people and 118,504 claims data were identified for vertigo cases. Characteristics of vertigo patients have significant differences on proportion of female patients (68.36%), patients' average age (54.98) and proportion of medical assistance (5.76%) compared with non-vertigo patients. Results revealed that Korean medicine are one of frequent methods among total treatments for vertigo patients. Total days of medical care and total costs are 2.78 days and 111,362 won, respectively, and days for outpatients in Korean medical care (mean: 2.26 days) are more than those (mean: 5.05 days) in Western medical care. There is significant difference relative to sex between acute vertigo and chronic vertigo. The odds ratio between chronic vertigo and mental disorder is estimated as 1.34, that means risk of becoming chronic is 34% higher for vertigo patients with mental disorder. Conclusions: This study assessed socio-demographic characteristics, medical care use and expenses related to vertigo, and estimated associations between chronic vertigo and mental disorder. Findings provide a basis for economic evaluation studies on vertigo patients and development of clinical practice guidelines for vertigo patients with mental disorder.