• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.28-38
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• 2019

Objectives: We searched and reviewed the literature including the laws or acts, statistics, guidelines, papers and conference proceedings related to home visit nursing care in South Korea. Method: We searched and reviewed the literature including the laws or acts, statistics, guidelines, papers and conference proceedings related to home visit nursing care in Korea. Results: There are three types of home care nursing in Korea. Public health center provides home visit nursing to vulnerable population by registered nurses for free, based on community health act in public health center. As of 2017, 1,261,208 people were enrolled in the visiting health program of public health center. Health behavior and disease management has been improved and showed having cost-benefit effect among the enrolled people in visiting health program. Visiting nursing care in long-term care services is provided by registered nurses or nurse aid, based on long-term care act. The cost is paid as the unit price according to service time. 1,095,764 older people used long-term care services in 2017, only 0.2% of total cost used for home visiting nursing. Even though the number of user of home visiting nursing, it was reported that users spent less medical cost and hospitalized shorter. Hospital-based home care nursing is provided to patients and their families under the prescription of a doctor by family nurse specialists who are employed by medical institute based on medical law. Four hundred sixty family nurse specialists worked for hospital-based home care nursing and hospital-based home care services accounted for 0.038% of total medical expenses in 2017. Conclusion: Even though home visit nursing care services are different in aspect of legal basis, personnel, running institutes, and cost basis, home visit nursing care showed cost-benefit effect and good health outcomes. In order to advance home visit nursing care, the integrated home visiting care, improvement of working condition, and revision of legal basis should be considered.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.12 no.8
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• pp.3547-3554
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• 2011

The aim of this study is to take hold of the present situation as well as the perspective of the domestic alcohol specialized hospitals. The structured questionnaire was prepared to understand the type of services, manpower and systematic programs. Among eight hospitals that stand for the alcohol addiction specialized hospitals, six hospitals agreed to participate in the survey, which was made from Jun. 17 to July 15, 2010. The average number of beds of the surveyed hospitals was 208. They were mostly private ones(66.7%), located in urban area(50%), and had experiences of alcohol treatment less than five years(50%). While all of them practiced both the inpatient and outpatient services, only 33% provided the systematic outpatient program that was at least 2 or 3 hours per week. All hospitals practiced the physical and individual psychological evaluations, but only 16.1% had the daytime programs. The beds of protective ward were 72% of all beds, and the beds of night and day occupied 7.6% and 2.6% respectively. It was found that although the average number of mental health social worker and mental health nurse was larger than that required in the regulation of mental health law there are significant deviations between hospitals. However, the manpower of psychiatrists and nurses were comparatively large. The first problem indicated by clinical experts was the patient's refusal of care, which results in an inefficiency in the treatment. The next problem was the lack of local health care institutions that can attend on the discharged patients were important issues. Also the low reimbursement and indifferences to the alcohol abuse were considered as important issues.

• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.44-59
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• 1994

Medical consumers(patients) want evening-clinic because of busy work. For patient's convenience and improving service, hospital should accept it. Considering payment system and patient's demand, personnel expenses, hospital can not accept. The practice of shift system to accept patient's demand and hospital's economic aspect was made. To analysis the effect of the system and probability to alternative to evening clinic this study was done. This study was composed of basal study, intervention, evaluation of effect. The basal study were composed of studying demand on evening clinic, the number of beds, doctors employee, the time table of practice and work, and the number of patients at arrival time. The intervention composed of changing of practice time, changing of working time by the number of patients at arrival time, increasing of employee. The evaluation of effect were composed of evaluating the number of patient at time, the effect of shift system, the comparison of the number of in and out patients and questionnairing the practice of shift system. In the practice time at 2 shift system First team works 7-15 hours and Second team 12-20 hours. there are no lunch and supper time. At 18-20 hours the number of patients were 25-30. The number of patient a depart were 6-7. The number of out-patient increase in 13% and inpatient increase in 10% before the system. Doctors(100%), employee(94.6%), and patients(86.4%) approved this system. The advantage of this system were utilization of surplus time, lengthen the practice time, even distribution of patients and shortening of waiting time, rapid treatment of emergent patients. The disadvantage of this system were shortage of manpower, not all depart practice, continuity of practice, no lunch and supper time, irregular rounding. At present because of small Demanding on evening clinic, this shift system was economical. To succeed this study more effectively all depart in hospital participate. But because of economical reason it is impossible for hospital to do it. If the government assist the economic loss that all depart participate in this system it is very helpful for hospital to succeed in implementing this system more early.

• Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.68-76
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• 2021

Foodborne outbreaks frequently occur worldwide and result in huge economic losses. It is the therefore important to estimate the costs associated with foodborne diseases to minimize the economic damage. At the same time, it is difficult to accurately estimate the economic loss from foodborne disease due to a wide variety of cost components. In Korea, there are a limited number of analytical studies attempting to estimate such costs. In this study we investigated the components of economic cost used in foreign countries to better estimate the cost of foodborne disease in Korea. Seven recent studies investigated the cost components used to estimate the cost of foodborne disease in humans. This study categorized the economic loss into four types of cost: direct costs, indirect costs, food business costs, and government administration costs. The healthcare costs most often included were medical (outpatient) and hospital costs (inpatient). However, these cost components should be selected according to the systems and budgets of medical services by country. For non-healthcare costs, several other studies considered transportation costs to the hospital as an exception to the cost of inpatient care. So, further discussion is needed on whether to consider inpatient care costs. Among the indirect costs, premature mortality, lost productivity, lost leisure time, and lost quality of life/pain, grief and suffering costs were considered, but the opportunity costs for hospital visits were not considered in any of the above studies. As with healthcare costs, government administration costs should also be considered appropriate cost components due to the difference in government budget systems, for example. Our findings will provide fundamental information for economic analysis associated with foodborne diseases to improve food safety policy in Korea.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.11 no.5
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• pp.347-354
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• 2013

In contrast to the increase in demand for high quality healthcare, there is limited medical human resources such as doctors and nurses so an excessive amount of workload is being forced to them. Therefore, a patient monitoring system using USN(Ubiquitous Sensor Network) is becoming a solution. This paper proposes a patient monitoring system applying USN in maternity hospital to reduce the workload of nurses. According to the efficiency evaluation test based on the model of two university hospitals(S, K University Hospital) and their doctor's diagnosis, the results showed that under the circumstances that one nurse is in charge of 12 patients(6 normal delivery patients and 6 cesarean delivery patients), a total of 1,260 minutes of workload was saved during hospitalization period(5 days). Also, we compared the workload of nurses with or without our proposed system, and the figures showed that in case of normal delivery patients, the workload of nurses decreased by 50 minutes per patient, whereas in case of cesarean delivery patients, the workload of nurses decreased by 130 minutes per patient.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.1045-1054
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• 2000

As cost pressures have escalated, policy makers, politicians, health care providers and families have tried to devise ways to reduce health care costs. While originally developed to enhance patient control and to provide better care at the end of life, hospice care has recently received significant attention as a mean of reducing health care costs. As a program providing care for patients who are dying at their homes, hospice has expanded slowly since the opening of the first hospice in Korea in 1963. Therefore, a variety of services that responds to the needs and concerns of many dying people and their families is limited The purpose of this study was to determine the potential cost savings at the end of life among patients who used home hospice compared with the patients who received institutional care in Korea. This study used a retrospective, descriptive design. The sample for this study included 46 patients who died of lung cancer: 25 patients who received home hospice care and 21 patients who received institutional care. Data on patient characteristics, kinds and frequencies of provided treatment and nursing services, and hospice and hospital charges during the last month before death were collected. Cost of care was measured by the average cost per patient per day in the last month of life. The results of the study indicated that there were significant differences in average cost of care between home hospice sample and institutional care sample (t=9.956, p<.001; home hospice sample: M=18,102 won, institutional care sample: M=317,578 won). The cost of the home hospice sample was approximately 6% of the cost of institutional care. The majority of the home hospice nursing services were education (35.7%) and supportive counseling (25.2%), followed by medication management (13.6%), assessment (12.1%), basic nursing (7.2%), treatment (5.5%) and others. In institutional care sample, basic nursing and treatment were more emphasized than education or supportive counseling among the nursing services provided. The results of this study showed the potential for hospice to reduce costs and implications for policymakers and clinicians to incorporate hospice program into the formal health care delivery system in Korea.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.20 no.8
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• pp.438-447
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• 2020

The purpose of this research is to investigate the mediating effect of sense of self-control in the relationship between loneliness and preparation for death of seniors living alone. The research results can be summarized as follows: First, the difference between the feeling of loneliness and the feeling of self-control, depending on the personal trait of the subject was examined. The subjects that are male, have no faith, and have their own houses showed a more intense feeling of loneliness than subjects that are female, have faith, and have their own houses, respectively. Also, the subjects that have their own houses and are engaged in economic activities showed a more intense feeling of self-control. Second, when it comes to the relationship between loneliness and preparation for death, seniors who had been hospitalized and had lower loneliness showed higher levels of preparation for death. Third, the analysis on the effect on sense of self-control revealed that the younger and the lower the loneliness, the higher the sense of self-control. Fourth, such sense of self-control had a partial mediating effect in the relationship between loneliness and preparation for death. Therefore, this research suggested measures to promote activities to prepare for death by decreasing loneliness and strengthening sense of self-control of the elderly living alone.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.15 no.10
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• pp.327-337
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to investigate patient satisfaction for the spacial environment of the rehabilitative facilities, and by this to examine areas of patients' needs to develop patient-friendly improvement in spacial environment. 308 patients were surveyed at physical therapy centers of 6 hospitals or rehabilitative institutions in Daejeon with patient satisfaction questionnaire. The spatial environment satisfaction was categorized into 7 constructs and the data were statistically analyzed and compared by t-test and ANOVA according to the patient characteristics. As a result, inter-floor transfer was found to be the area with the least satisfaction, especially in the in-patient group. Locating floor level was the second lowest satisfied construct. Comfort was relatively highly satisfied construct overall, but patients with neurological disease had less satisfaction than with musculoskeletal disease. Patients in 20's were less satisfied in wayfinding than 60's. Satisfaction for interior design was lower in subject in 50's than 70's. These findings can be used as evidences to improve spacial environment design for rehabilitative facilities to the better patient satisfaction.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.6 no.6
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• pp.9-15
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• 2015

The study aims to examine the knowledge and awareness of care workers on oral health knowledge at the geriatric care facilities in order to improve and develop oral health services. For the research method, the study carried out a questionnaire survey to 163 care workers working at the geriatric care facilities (10) in D Metropolitan City from May 1~31, 2015 and then the collected data were statistically analyzed. As a result, the oral health knowledge of care workers was 20.09 points out of total 26 points (77.2%). The highest knowledge was 'proper toothbrushing method' with 93.0% and the lowest one was 'knowledge on the use of oral supplementary goods' with 58.1%. Those with experience of oral health education had higher demand on oral health education (P<0.001), and those with higher experience of oral health education had significantly higher oral health knowledge (P<0.001), demand (P<0.01) and awareness (P<0.05). As for factors influencing care workers' oral health awareness, if they had higher oral health knowledge points (P<0.01), oral health education demand (P<0.01), they had higher oral health awareness level. Accordingly, it is required to provide efficient, sustainable and practical oral health education of care workers considering oral characteristics of the long-term hospitalized patients at the care hospital. And, the role of dental hygienist as the person in charge of oral health education is necessary. Therefore, institutional support from the government is required to assign professional personnel.

• The Journal of Korean Medicine
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• v.17 no.2 s.32
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• pp.34-47
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• 1996

We have seen a sharp increase in the utilization rate of medical services since the launch of Nation Health Insurance system in 1989. However, the market share of oriental medicine in the Korean health sector has been gradually diminished mainly due to low insurance coverage and high price. Especially high price as an entry barrier to oriental medical services has played a major role in decreasing market share. This paper investigated the effects of price discount on the financial condition and market share of oriental medical institutions. Microeconomic theory and multiple regression analysis were used as a methodology in testing the alternative hypothesis: price discount of enveloped herb drug will result in increases in both the revenue and market share of oriental medical institutions. Data was collected from the statistical yearbook and sample survey. The price elasticity of demand for enveloped herb drug was estimated at 5.8 during 1987-1995 period, which means that a 1% decrease in price will bring about a 5.8% increase in the utilization of oriental medical services. The empirical result shows that a drastic price discount for the enveloped herb drug will eventually improve the financial status of the oriental medical institutions and enlarge the market share of oriental medicine in the Korean health care sector.