• Health Policy and Management
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.35-69
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• 1995

The managerial environment of hospitals in Korea characterized by low levels of medical insurance fees is worsening by increasing government regulations as to the utilization of medical services, rising costs of labor, material, and medical equipments, growing patient expectations concerning the quality of services, and escalating competitions among large hospitals in the market. Hospitals should seek for their survival strategies in this harsh environment and they should have information about costs of their products in doing so. However, it has not been available due to the complexity of the production process of hospital services. The objectives of this study were to develop a service-based cost accounting model and to apply the developed model to a study hospital to obtain cost information of hospital services. A model commonly used for the job-order product cost accounting in the manufacturing industry was modified for the use in hospitals in Korea. Actual costs, instead of standard costs, incurred to produce a unit of services during a given period of time were estimated in the model. Data required to implement the model included financial information, statistics for the allocation of supportive cost center costs to final cost centers, statistics for the allocation of final cost center costs to services, and the volume of each services charged to patients during a study period. The model was executed using data of a university teaching hospital located in Seoul for the fiscal year 1992. Data for financial information, allocation statistics fo supportive service costs, and the volume of services, most of them in electronic form, were available to the study. Data for allocation statistics of final cost center costs were collected in the study. There were 15 types of evaluation and management service, 2, 923 types of technical service, and 2, 608 types of drug and material service charged to patients in the study hospital during the fiscal year 1992. Labor costs of each of seven types of pesonnel, material costs of 611 types of drugs and materials, and depreciation costs of 212 types of medical equipments, miscellaneous costs, and indirect costs incurred in producing a unit of each services were estimated. Medical insurance fees for basic services such as evaluation and management of inpatients and outpatients, injection, and filling prescriptions, and for operating procedures were found to be set lower than costs. Infrequent services which use expensive medical equipments showed negative revenuse as well. On the other hand, fees for services not covered by the insurance such as CT, MRI and Sonogram, and for laboratory tests were higher than costs. This study has a significance in making it possible for a hospital to obtain cost information for all types of services which produced income based on all types of expenses incurred during a given period of time. This information can assist the management of a hospital in finding an effective cost reduction strategy, an efficient service-mix strategy under a given fee structure, and an optimum strategy for within-hospital resource allocations.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 2009

It is expected that a substantial amount of spent fuels will be transported from the four nuclear power plant (NPP) sites in Korea to a hypothetical centralized interim storage facility or a final repository in the near future. The cost for the transportation is proportional to the amount of spent fuels. In this paper, a cost estimation program is developed based on the conceptual design of a transportation system and a logistics analysis. Using the developed computer program, named as CASK, the minimum capacity of a centralized interim storage facility (CISF) and the transportation cost for PWR spent fuels are calculated. The PWR spent fuels are transported from 4 NPP sites to a final repository (FR) via the CISF. Since NPP sites and the CISF are located along the coast, a sea-transportation is considered and a road-transportation is considered between the CISF and the FR. The result shows that the minimum capacity of the interim storage facility is 15,000 MTU.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.135-141
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• 2008

Independent suspension axle and final reduction gear for special-purpose vehicles such as a armored vehicles are almost imported in Germany etc. so, developing them is necessary to save cost. In severe condition (open fields, water surface driving, obstacle pass), special-purpose vehicles must work well. Drop box, axle and final reduction gear performed static analysis. We know that is possible weight reduction. The purpose of this paper is to find out the optimal shape of final reduction gear's case by means of response surface methodology. The response surface method is the statistical method which can be applied to the non-sensitivity based optimization. The response surface which is constructed by the least square method contains only the polynomial terms so that the global maximum and minimum points are easily obtained.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.19-32
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• 2002

This paper examines the effect of the producer-supplier quality contract parameters and the magnitude of the quality related variables on the quality of the final products. Our analysis focuses on the parties' equilibrium behavior In a quality game environment where the supplier should choose among the two production technologies, one requiring high cost but producing high quality Parts and the other requiring low cost but producing low quality parts and where the producer should decide whether to do the inspection of the parts. The game framework is employed to depict the potential conflicts existing between the Producer and the supplier because the Producer can not observe the supplier's choice and each party wants the other to bear the cost of producing high quality products. In our model, we specifically consider the competitive situation where the producer competes with a firm producing the same product. We employ the market share attraction model to Incorporate the competitive situation and completely characterize the equilibrium by using the Nash equilibrium concept for the game solution. Our results show that the equilibrium depends on the contract terms and the magnitude of the quality related variables. Compared to the non-competitive situation, the probability of producer's Inspection and the probability of supplier's choosing the high quality technology increases in a competitive situation. This is true even when the competitor's quality is lower than the producer's lowest. As a result, the quality of the final product increases In a competitive situation. And as the failure cost borne by the supplier increases, the probability of choosing the high quality technology Increases and the probability of inspection decreases. The net effect of this results in the decrease of the final product quality.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.53 no.3
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• pp.205-210
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• 2020

Objectives: Aging is assumed to be accompanied by greater health care expenditures. The objective of this retrospective, bottom-up micro-costing study was to identify and analyze the variables related to increased health care costs for the elderly from the provider's perspective. Methods: The analysis included all elderly inpatients who were admitted in 2017 to a hospital in Tehran, Iran. In total, 1288 patients were included. The Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used. Results: Slightly more than half (51.1%) of patients were males, and 81.9% had a partial recovery. The 60-64 age group had the highest costs. Cancer and joint/orthopedic diseases accounted for the highest proportion of costs, while joint/orthopedic diseases had the highest total costs. The surgery ward had the highest overall cost among the hospital departments, while the intensive care unit had the highest mean cost. No statistically significant relationships were found between inpatient costs and sex or age group, while significant associations (p<0.05) were observed between inpatient costs and the type of ward, length of stay, type of disease, and final status. Regarding final status, costs for patients who died were 3.9 times higher than costs for patients who experienced a partial recovery. Conclusions: Sex and age group did not affect hospital costs. Instead, the most important factors associated with costs were type of disease (especially chronic diseases, such as joint and orthopedic conditions), length of stay, final status, and type of ward. Surgical services and medicine were the most important cost items.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute Of Construction Engineering and Management
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• 2006.11a
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• pp.137-142
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• 2006

Cost and duration is important factors which directly affect profit therefore must be forecasted correctly to accomplish success of projects. So construction company uses EVMS(Earned Value Management System) to forecast final cost and duration. But previous forecasting model has low accuracy because of its linear forecasting method and can't reflect characteristic of company and project and changes as each progress. This paper presents cost and duration forecasting model using the slope prediction of cost and duration as each progress to reflect the various characteristics of construction industry. EVMS data of 23 road construction projects was used to make up regression analysis equation of slope forecasting model.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2005.03a
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• pp.948-955
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• 2005

In this case of study, Incheon International Airport 2nd phase site preparation 1st section estimated final settlement to improve soft ground. Final settlement is very important in preloading method. Recently, Hyperbolic method, Hoshino method and Asaoka method are used mostly in prediction of final settlement and this paper, Comparing a result of Final settlement, used to Artificial Neural Network. The structure of Dynamic Artificial Neural Network which predicted Final settlement, has application to Young_Jong Island other site, If new investigation data will be added. Also, It is expected to save measuring_system cost in soft ground.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.23 no.55
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• pp.51-71
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• 2000

A case of company manufacturing industrial valves is studied. To survive the fierce competition in the low-volume, high-complexity production environment, the company needs accurate information on the cost of its products. Current cost accounting system which allocates production costs based on the weights of intermediates and final products cannot provide accurate cost information that managers really need. Data on the company's cost structure and production processes were reviewed and managers were interviewed before problems with the current costing system were identified. Activity-based costing (ABC) system as well as an improved traditional costing system is considered to replace the current system. A prototype of ABC system is developed to better represent the relationships among the cost drivers, activities, and products.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.261-272
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• 2022

This study examined the association between key audit matters (KAM) and the cost of debt. Financial records and auditors' reports were used to collect data for the fiscal years 2016 and 2017, which were the first two years after KAM was implemented in Thailand. Samples are listed companies in Thailand, where the financial system is primarily debt-based and external auditors play an important role in maintaining financial reporting quality. The final samples for the two-year period consist of 770 observations. The KAM is measured in three aspects: the number of issues, the number of words, and the readability, while the cost of debt is measured by the ratio of interest expense to total debt. The research finds that the KAM readability is significantly and negatively related to the cost of debt. Meanwhile, the number of issues and words have no significant effect on the cost of debt. The finding suggests that auditors' writing skills play a crucial role in the lending decisions of creditors.

• Journal of Power System Engineering
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.106-111
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• 2005

After many casualties of conventional bulk carriers in recent years, a double hull bulk carrier was proposed to enhance the structural safety of a side shell and a transverse bulkhead. In this paper, two alternative structural designs of a double hull bulk carrier were carried out based on the Lloyd's rule. One has the double sided hull with longitudinal stiffeners and the other has that with a girder. The final structural design was examined in comparison with an existing single hull bulk carrier from the viewpoints of cargo hold capacity and the increases of weight and construction cost. Generally, the construction cost of a ship consists of the costs of material, labor and overhead cost. But, in this study, the relative construction cost concept was introduced to compare the economical validity more precisely. In this concept, fixed overhead cost is excluded in the assessment of construction cost, and only the variable overhead cost is added up to labor cost. As the result of this study, a double hull bulk carrier can be constructed within 1% increase of weight and construction cost.