• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.1-13
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• 2023

Purpose: This study purposed to analyze the economic feasibility of introducing a third party logistics system as a strategic alternative to hospital management. Methods: Economic analysis was performed by measuring changes in costs and benefits before and after implement the third party logistics system and estimating the size of net benefits for the next five years for the target hospital. A questionnaire survey and in-depth interview with stake-holders were conducted to find out the satisfaction and effectiveness of the system. Findings: According to results, the cost-benefit ratio for the implementation of the system was 1.18. For the next five years, the cost-benefit ratio was 1.48, the net present value was about 1.7 billion won, and the internal rate of return was 64%. The satisfaction of internal stake-holders was relatively high, in terms of improving the concentration of unique tasks and increasing the efficiency of inventory management. Practical Implications: It was found that the increase in benefits had a greater effect on the change in the cost-benefit ratio than the increase in costs resulting from the expansion of logistics, and the increase in the present value of net benefits gradually decreased as the cost increased. In addition, overall job satisfaction and satisfaction with outsourcing companies were relatively low, which means that stabilization of the new system is important. Further study is needed for more accurate economic analysis.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.228-241
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• 2014

Background: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effect of health insurance coverage expansion for cancer patients on equity in health care utilization and catastrophic expenditure. Methods: To analyze the causal relationship between the policy to expand benefit coverage and the change in health care utilization and out-of-pocket payments of cancer patients, this study employed a difference-in-differences (DID) method. In the DID model, the change in health care utilization, such as health care expenditure, visit days and length of stay, of cancer patients was compared with that of liver disease patients, using Korea Health Panel Data in 2009 and 2010. Results: The policy of reducing cost sharing from 10% to 5% for cancer patients did not have significant effects on equity in health care utilization. The results of this study were different from those of the previous study that showed that the reduction of cost sharing from 20% to 10% significantly improved the equity in health care utilization of cancer patients. In addition, the result of catastrophic expenditures analysis showed the policy did not change the probability of catastrophic expenditures. Conclusion: The results of this study imply that payment for non-covered services account for high out-of-pocket payments, and the reduction in cost sharing for covered services alone may have a limited effect on total financial burden on patients.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.141-151
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• 2016

Recently, technology for energy recovery from waste has been increasing interest globally including the Korea. In Korea, we have interested in using biogas generated from the sewage treatment process. As one alternative, there are operating biogas combined heat and power plant. The generation amount of the Sewage Sludge are expected to grow in the future. For this reason, total processing cost of Sewage Sludge will increase. To solve this problem, it seems will be invested with the expansion of facilities that use biogas as energy. Therefore, quantitative information on such facilities is required. Thus, this study attempts to economic feasibility analysis for Seonam Biogas Combined Heat and Power Plant. Meanwhile, as the benefit items for economic feasibility analysis consider electricity supply benefit except for heat supply benefit. The average prices of electricity use were residence 123.69, commercial 130.46, and industry 102.59 won per kWh for the year 2015, In addition, the economic benefit are calculated to be residence 310.21, commercial 378.49, and industry 222.87 won per kWh. The results of economic feasibility analysis is NPV 72.18 billion won, B/C 1.90, IRR 37%, shows that economic validity of Seonam Biogas Combined Heat and Power Plant.

• Journal of Computational Design and Engineering
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.37-52
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• 2016

To injection mould polymers, designing mould is a key task involving several critical decisions with direct implications to yield quality, productivity and frugality. One prominent decision among them is specifying sprue-bush conduit expansion as it significantly influences overall injection moulding; abstruseness anguish in its design criteria deceives direct determination. Intuitively designers decide it wisely and then exasperate by optimising or manipulating processing parameters. To overwhelm that anomaly this research aims at proposing an ideal design criteria holistically for all polymeric materials also tend as a functional assessment metric towards perfection i.e., criteria to specify sprue conduit size before mould development. Accordingly, a priori analytical criterion was deduced quantitatively as expansion ratio from ubiquitous empirical relationships specifically a.k.a an exclusive expansion angle imperatively configured for injectant properties. Its computational intelligence advantage was leveraged to augment functionality of perfectly injecting into an impression gap, while synchronising both injector capacity and desired moulding features. For comprehensiveness, it was continuously sensitised over infinite scale as an explicit factor dependent on in-situ spatio-temporal injectant state perplexity with discrete slope and altitude for each polymeric character. In which congregant ranges of apparent viscosity and shear thinning index were conceived to characteristically assort most thermoplastics. Thereon results accorded aggressive conduit expansion widening for viscous incrust, while a very aggressive narrowing for shear thinning encrust; among them apparent viscosity had relative dominance. This important rationale would certainly form a priori design basis as well diagnose filling issues causing several defects. Like this the proposed generic design criteria, being simple would immensely benefit mould designers besides serve as an inexpensive preventive cliché to moulders. Its adaption ease to practice manifests a hope of injection moulding extremely alluring polymers. Therefore, we concluded that appreciating injectant's polymeric character to design exclusive sprue bush offers a definite a priori advantage.

• Journal of Society of Preventive Korean Medicine
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.1-24
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• 2000

This study was conducted to examine utilization patterns and determinants of oriental medical services. Data were collected from 545 residents in Taegu city The results of this study are summarized as follows 1) 37.8% of subjects used oriental medical services in the past year. Especially, the female, the ages of 50 and 60 over, the single. low-educated. high-income class, white-collar class, medical insured tended to use more oriental medical services than another groups. 2) 46.7% of users of oriental medical services reported that number of visits in the past year was 2 - 5 times 37 1% of them was 1 times, and 4.5% over 10 times. 3) According to the reasons to choose the oriental medical facilities, most was 'on their own judgement'(48.8%) and 'by the advice of relatives and friends'(42.0%) Regarding to the objectives of using oriental medicine, 68.3% was 'treatment', 31.7% 'health counselling and promotion'. And among diseases of users, diseases of musculo-skeletal system was the highest(54.5%). 4) 57.9% of oriental medical services users had experience of utilizing western medicine on the same diseases. Among peoples with experiencing western medicine on the same diseases. 54.4% received oriental medical services 'in addition to western medicine', 45.6%'in place of western medicine 'And 41.2% of using both services reported that they had difficulty in deciding to choose the type of services -oriental medical services or western medicine-for their diseases. 37.3% of them answered that 'providing relevant information' was the most desirable measure to solve this problem, 27.3% 'establishment of effective referral system between oriental and western medical facilities '23.6% 'cooperative medical treatment systems in the same facilities', 11.8%'integration of oriental medicine into western medicine 5) According to the satisfaction level with each items of oriental medical services, the respondents had positive views on efficacy, kindness, and side-effects. They, however, had negative view on the cost of oriental medical services. 6) In regarding to the priority of improvement of oriental medical system,'expansion of insurance benefit package 'ranked first. 'expansion of insurance benefit Package 'ranked second, 'improvement of scientific methods and diagnostic technique 'third, and 'safety of herbal medicine' fourth in order. 7) The significant factors influencing the utilization of oriental medical services were kindness of oriental medical practitioners, efficacy , travel time, age To be brief, utilization rate of oriental medical services in urban area generally tends to be high. There, however, have been various barriers to limit oriental medical services, such as incomplete benefit package of oriental medical insurance and lack of coordination and referral system between oriental and western medical services, lack of scientific diagnostic procedures, high price etc . For the development of oriental medical services, Much attention to remove these limiting factors should be placed. In addition, kindness of oriental medical practitioners , which is expected to be more important factor in the consumer - focused health care environment than ever, should be kept high consistently. Since this study was conducted for specific residents of an urban city. further research including more sampling in different urban areas should be required to generalize the results of the study.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.181-190
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• 2014

Background: Demands are recently rising for the securement of procedural justification of policy decision-making. This study aims to improve the procedure of making a decision to expand health insurance benefit package from the perspective of building a social consensus. Methods: Major priority principles were firstly derived through literature search. Weights for such principles were calculated through an analytic hierarchy process, based upon the survey conducted for the health policy experts. Priority for 11 non-covered services was assessed by applying the weights as above to the results of the questionnaire survey targeted at people including members of related committees or societies. Results: Weights for priority principles were in the order of 'severity/urgency (0.428)', 'cost-effectiveness (0.318)', 'substitutability (0.164),' and 'accountability (0.090)'. What was obtained by applying these weights to the results of the questionnaire survey was considerably in line with what health experts classified those items into 3 groups depending on their own judgement of service necessity (consistent with 9 services out of 11). Conclusion: Results of the study are suggestive as to how far a brief assessment by experts could be utilized in case there are constraints on time and expenses in implementing all the process to secure procedural justification. Various attempts and endeavors need to be made to secure procedural justification that will not mar efficiency of decision-making in the days to come.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.66 no.1
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• pp.68-73
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• 1984

Modern society has required to make maximization of the public benefit for forests. The increased public interest and concern for forests have been resulted from high mechanization of industrial activity associated with development of national economy, expansion of urban population, and necessity of more Leisure time caused by improvement of standard living condition. Attention shifted to the managing of forest (and on the basis of multiple use concept, achieving both public benefit and economic function. Management standards and control must be strengthened on all operations to encompass the various forest resources; outdoor recreation, watersheds, wildlife and fisheries, timber, rangeland, and aesthetic values. Particularly, in order to determine public interests and balance the needs in relation to available resources, more research is essential to develope and activate quantification of these intangeble forest resource values.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.47 no.3
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• pp.219-225
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• 2014

In Korea, there are 1,474 thousand pumping wells nationwide which account for about 12% of total water use in 2012. As much as 39 hundred million tons of groundwater were used while 333 hundred million tons of total water were supplied in 2012. Because the water management authority projects that water demand will exceed supply by 2021, the authority is planning to extensively expand groundwater use in accordance with economic feasibility. Using the basic frameworks of cost-benefit analyses of the World Bank and the US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA), the objective of this study is to examine the costs and benefits of the expansion of Korea's groundwater extraction through pumping wells. We conclude that the BC ratio of the groundwater pumping wells is 2.98. This signifies that the benefits are 2.98 times higher than the costs. The benefits include use and non-use values of pumping wells while the costs include the installation and maintenance of new wells, in addition to the restoration and pollution costs of abandoned wells, as well as fees for water quality tests, etc.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.19-25
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• 2011

Generally, the generation methods of cooling energy are electric air conditioning (EAC) and gas air conditioning (GAC). The EAC system is caused by increasing peak power during summer. Because the electric energy has a characteristic of non-storage, the peak electric load has been issued social problem annually whether the facility to supply is enough or not. Another way to supply cooling energy, GAC system is worked by gas energy. The absorption chiller and gas engine heat pump have been commercialized for cooling. However, the total capacity of GAC is much less than EAC and it almost depends on EAC for small market. This paper described the status of cooling energy consumption in domestic and expected the cooling energy to be consumed by electric and gas energy up to 2024 year. And also the benefit of GAC was analyzed with the case of its expansion and it was aimed to give background to fit the GAC policy.

• Proceedings of the Korea Technology Innovation Society Conference
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• 2015.11a
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• pp.479-487
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• 2015

In Korea, there are 1,474 thousand pumping wells nationwide which account for about 12% of total water use in 2012. As much as 39 hundred million tons of groundwater were used while 333 hundred million tons of total water were supplied in 2012. Because the water management authority projects that water demand will exceed supply by 2021, the authority is planning to extensively expand groundwater use in accordance with economic feasibility. Using the basic frameworks of cost-benefit analyses of the World Bank and the US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA), the objective of this study is to examine the costs and benefits of the expansion of Korea's groundwater extraction through pumping wells. We conclude that the BC ratio of the groundwater pumping wells is 2.98. This signifies that the benefits are 2.98 times higher than the costs. The benefits include use and non-use values of pumping wells while the costs include the installation and maintenance of new wells, in addition to the restoration and pollution costs of abandoned wells, as well as fees for water quality tests, etc.