• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2007.08a
• /
• pp.85-86
• /
• 2007

As the manufacturing capacity needs for large size LCD TV shifts very fast into next generation, equipment manufactures face more challenges in development of the systems which can accommodate productivity, reliability and high process quality requirements from the panel makers. AKT committed to continue its contribution to the growth of the LCD market by providing excellent PECVD products. The cost containment and performance improvement are key challenges for large size processing equipment development and this presentation discusses various challenges and AKT's solutions in developing large size PECVD equipment beyond Gen. 8.

• Health Policy and Management
• /
• v.3 no.1
• /
• pp.25-52
• /
• 1993

Variation in the utilization of medical services is a very important issue in cost containment and quality assurance of health care. Practice variation directly affects health care expenditure especially in fee-for-service system, which is the payment system of health insurance in Korea. In addition to cost issue it is generally accepted that variations in medical practice and the cost of inpatient care suggest the possibility of inappropriate quality of care. This study is to closely examine the patterne and degrees of variation in cost structure of inpatient care among types of hospital and individual hospitals in some tracer diseases, and also to inquire into the service items which contribute much to the variation of total medical care cost. Foru common diseases, i.e. Cesarean Section, appendectomy, cataract extraction and pediatric pneumonia, were selected as tracer diseases. In most tracer diseases there were statistically significant differences in total medical care cost among hospitals in same type of hospital as well as among types of hospital(p<0.01). When total medical care cost were subdivided into the types of service, cost of medication and diagnostic examination varied the most prominenly. When the cost of medication were subdivided again, cost of parenteral antibiotics showed the most prominent variation. Of total medical care cost, medication was most contributory to the variation of total medical care cost(58.1~82.3%), and cost of antibiotics was most contributory to the variation of medication cost(63.9~92.2%). The results of study implicated that reducing the variation of medication may plays a significant role in containing the cost of inpatient care. In order to sort out the factors affecting practice variations including drug prescription pattes further researches are required.

• Health Policy and Management
• /
• v.14 no.2
• /
• pp.58-77
• /
• 2004

Cost containment has become high political issues since financial crisis of the Korean Health Insurance fund in 2000. Korean Government has developed and implemented several measures to reduce the pharmaceutical expenditures. Pharmaceutical economic evaluation can be a tool in decision to allocate scare resource efficiently. In order to increase the quality of economic evaluation for pharmaceuticals, the Korean Health Insurance Review Agency(HIRA) is considering the development of a guideline for economic evaluation. It mandates that pharmaceutical companies could submit the result of an economic evaluation when demanding reimbursement of new pharmaceutical drugs. The purpose of this study is to provide a critical review of the economic evaluations of health care technologies published in the Korean context whether they have been performed according to current guidelines and therefore whether their results are directly useful for decision making. We found there exist important problems and deviation from, good practice' both in the general features of the studies, like the study design and perspective, and in terms of cost measurement and valuation. There are needs to develop clear guidelines and to educate and train researchers in performing economic evaluations.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
• /
• v.46
• /
• pp.349-376
• /
• 2001

The objectives of this study is to examine the German mandatory prescription system in terms of the applicability and restriction of the pharmaceutical policy in order to obtain some useful implications for solving the problems in Korean prescription system. Recently, in Germany, an issue about the security of the prescription, the price control of the pharmaceuticals and the containment of the increasing prescription expenditure has been intensively discussed. Similar problems are also occurred in Korea. So, the policy measurements of Germany could be used in Korea. But it could not easy to introduce the German policy measurements in Korea because of the social-institutional differences between the two countries, which are following; (1) Korea has a short experience with the mandatory prescription system, (2) the German concept of the management differs from that of the Korea, (3) the subscribers and the patients are excluded from the decision making process, (4) the medical service providers often resist against reform plans. For the stable development of the Korean prescription system the principle of self-government, the collective bargaining concept for cost containment, and social consensus about optimal expenditure of the pharmaceuticals are expected to be needed.

• Journal of Technologic Dentistry
• /
• v.16 no.1
• /
• pp.78-104
• /
• 1994

Under the fee for service schedule of Korean health insurance system, rational fee for dental laboratory products based on the cost is required to be formulated. The purpose of this study was to find actual cost of dental laboratory products in case of a University Hospital. Materials of this study were used as follows : 1. Balance sheet at Dec. 31, 1992 and profit and loss report of the year 1992 of the sample hospital 2. Performance report of dental laboratory department. 3. Purchasing and other accounting bills of dental laboratory materials. The following methods were used. 1. Actual cost finding of dental laboratory department was performed. 2. Work sampling methods were used for measuring standard working time by the process of working. 3. To porcelain fused to metal crown(non-precious), Relative value of the cost of dental laboratory products was calculated as 1.00. 4. Fee and cost of those products were compared on the basis of Relative values. The results of the study can be summarized as follow : 1. Overall, it took longs time than other items. to product denture-related items. 2. When several teeth are made in a time, average production time is much sorter than when one tooth is made in a time. 3. The relative price cost of Dicor cast crown and denture related items are higher than the criterion items. 4. The material cost occupies average 11% out of the total price cost, proportion of personnel expenses is average as 60.0%. 5. Some of the components consisting of the price cost are not reflected adequately in setting the level of the reimbursement price. 6. Relative values of dental laboratory products price cost are varied in the range from 0.05 to 2.83, overall, the reimbursement price of dental products appears not to reflect adequately the price cost. On the basis of this study results, the following ideas would be suggested : 1. Fee Schedule of dental laboratory products should be renovated in order to reflect their costs. 2. Dental laboratory product manufacturers should be enlarged for the economy of scale which may be useful for cost- containment. 3. Dental laboratory producters themselves are required to be standardiqed according to the categories of skill.

• Health Policy and Management
• /
• v.11 no.3
• /
• pp.46-70
• /
• 2001

Medical Aid expenditure Increased rapidly at a higher rate than that of Medical Insurance during the period 1992-1999. To establish an effective cost containment strategy, knowledge of the cause and the nature of the increase of Medical Aid expenditure is required. The purpose of this study was to analyze increasing rates of Medical Aid expenditure by the components of medical expenses. Data were collected using the Medical Aid Statistical Yearbook during the period of 1992-1999. The major findings were as follows: 1. The annual mean increasing rate of Medical Aid expenditure between 1992 and 1999 was 22.8%, which exceeding that of Medical Insurance expenditure (17.5%) between 1992 and 1999. Since 1998, Medical Aid expenditure increased even more rapidly than in previous years, with the increase in number of Medical Aid beneficiaries. 2. Of Medical Aid expenditure, that of inpatient and outpatient annually increased 24.2% and 22.8% respectively and that of type 1 and type 2 increased annually 28.8% (outpatient) ∼29.9% (inpatient), 14.3% (outpatient) ∼ 15.5% (inpatient). Therefore, Medical Aid expenditure of inpatient and type 1 led the increase of Medical Aid expenditure. 3. Between 1992 and 1997, the frequencies of utilization per beneficiary and the charges per case positively contributed to the increase of Medical Aid expenditure while the number of beneficiaries contributed negatively, but since 1998, the number of beneficiaries increased and positively contributed to the increase of Medical Aid expenditure. 4. According to the analysis of the charges per case, the increase of the price index led to the increase of the charges per case but the days of medication and service intensity also contributed to the increase of the charges per case variably by year. Considering the above findings, factors associated with the Medical Aid system affected the increase of Medical Aid expenditure in addition to the general factors of the increase in medical expenditure. In conclusion, it appears that a more intensive cost containment strategy is required to control rapidly increasing Medical Aid expenditure. For this, more precise analysis and development of policy considering the effect of the number of beneficiaries and the increase of price index is needed.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
• /
• v.28 no.2 s.50
• /
• pp.325-333
• /
• 1995

Laparoscopic cholecystectomy was introduced into Korea in 1990 and has been rapidly replacing open cholecystectomy when the indications were met. In this study a medical utilization and technology was assessed on the selected hospitalized patients with cholelithiasis who underwent open or laparoscopic cholecystectomy from April 1, 1991 to March 31, 1994. The results are as follows. Despite the low reimbursement rate by the health insurance, the number of laparoscopic cases have been steadily increased. The post-operative days before health insurance coverage were significantly shortened from 8.4 days to 4.6 days. The preoperative days before health insurance coverage were significantly shorted from 8.4 days to 4.0 days. The total length-of-stays in the hospital were also significantly shortened from 15.2 days to 10.7 and 9.8 days in laparoscopic cholecystectomy. The laparoscopic cholecystectomy showed low expenses in all aspects expect the average hospital charges per day. For the hospital to have cost containment, it is more effective if length-of-stay is shorter because of high daily inpatient hospital charge. The laparoscopic cholecystectomy also showed shortened anesthesia time and operation time compared with open cholecystectomy that were statistically significant. The mean anesthesia and operation time for open cholecystectomy were 113.2 and 90.2 minutes but those of laparoscopic cholecystectomy were 105.7 and 68.6 minutes. According to this study the laparoscopic cholecystectomy has reduced the medical expenditure and we recommend this procedure over open cholecystectomy. The further discussion on the different morbidity rate between two types of procedure is essential in providing quality medical care, and to educate specialist.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
• /
• v.23 no.4 s.32
• /
• pp.451-464
• /
• 1990

The variation in resource utilization for hospitalized patients who had a group of similar diseases -- a Korean Diagnosis Related Group (KDRG) -- among the same type of hospitals was studied to assess the utillization variation due to the practice pattern of hospitals. Information about inpatients who were beneficiaries of the medical insurance for teachers and government officials discharged from 20 large university teaching hospitals in Seoul during 1986 and information about the hospitals were analyzed to achieve the study objective. A total of 20,223 non-outlier patients in 100 most frequent KDRGs were included in the analysis. Case charges after the review and length of stay (LOS) were used as measures of resource utilization during a hospitalization. A substantial variation among hospitals was found in most KDRGs : o the ratio of the maximum and the minimum among the mean case charges of hospitals was greater than 2 in 83 KDRGs ; o the difference between the maximum and the minimum among the mean case charges of hospitals was greater than 100,000 Won in 94 KDRGs : o the ratio of the maximum and the minimum among the mom LOS of hospitals was greater than 2 in 82 KDRGs ; o the difference between the maximum and the minimum among the mean LOS of hospitals was greater than 3 days in 94 KDRGs. The practice pattern of hospitals explained more than 20% of charge variation in 49 KDRGs and more than 20% of LOS variation in 43 KDRGs. The study results indicated need for a new health policy initiative for cost containment and quality assurance.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
• /
• 1996.11a
• /
• pp.183-190
• /
• 1996

Leak-before-break(LBB) approach has been shown to be both cost and risk effective by reducing maintenance cost and occupational exposure when applied to high energy piping in nuclear power plants. For Korean Next Generation Reactor(KNGR) development, LBB is considered for the Main Steam Line(MSL) piping inside containment. Unlike the reactor coolant piping leakages which can be detected by particulate and gaseous radiation monitoring, main steam line leak detection systems must be based on principles that do not involve radioactivity. Ceramics are widely used as humidity sensor materials which can be further developed for nuclear applications. In this paper, we describe the progress in the development of ceramic humidity sensors for use with the main steam lines of KNGR.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
• /
• 2015.10a
• /
• pp.310-312
• /
• 2015

Small Unmanned Aerial Systems (SUAS) have been gaining a special attention in the U.S. recently because it is capable of getting aerial footages conveniently and cost effectively, but also because of its potential threat to the safety of our society. Regarding the benefits, one can easily find successful cases. For example, remote controlled or pre-programmed unmanned aircraft help ranch owners monitor their livestocks or crop harvesting status cost-effectively without having to hire human pilots. The professionals in the construction industry also acknowledge the benefits they could gain from using SUAS. Some firms already use a small unmanned aircraft for monitoring their construction activities, which may help project managers figure out construction progress, resolve disputes in real time, and make proactive decisions for quality control. However, there are many technical challenges that my hinder the use of small unmanned aircraft in the construction industry. This paper explores opportunities and challenges in using unmanned aircraft to monitor concrete cracks on the surface of containment building in the nuclear power plant.