• Health Policy and Management
• /
• v.29 no.1
• /
• pp.82-85
• /
• 2019

Unmet healthcare needs are being used as an important indicator of the accessibility of healthcare services worldwide. To examine current status and trends of unmet needs in Korea, we used data from four sources: the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES, 2007-2017); the Community Health Survey (CHS 2008-2017); the Korea Health Panel Survey (KHP 2011-2015); and the Korean Welfare Panel Study (KOWEPS 2006-2017). The proportion of individual reporting unmet healthcare needs as of 2017 was 8.8% (KNHANES), 10.6% (CHS), and 12.4% (KHP as of 2015). The proportion of households reporting unmet healthcare needs due to cost was 0.5% (KOWEPS). Annual percentage change was -19.2%, -13.3%, -5.8%, and -13.3% respectively. Low income populations had more unmet healthcare needs than high income populations. However, unlike the last two studies, the main reason for unmet medical reasons was that there was no time regardless of income level.

• Health Policy and Management
• /
• v.33 no.4
• /
• pp.389-399
• /
• 2023

Background: The purpose of this study is to analyze the factors affecting the unmet healthcare needs of older people with chronic diseases in Korea and provide a basic research report to strengthen their access to medical care. Methods: In the 2020 older people survey data, 8,182 older people aged 65 or older who were diagnosed with one or more chronic diseases were the final subjects of the study. According to Andersen's behavioral model used in unmet healthcare needs, independent variables were composed of predisposing factors, possible factors, and necessary factors, and whether or not unmet healthcare needs was set as dependent variable. Results: Of the older people with chronic diseases, 1.6% experienced unmet healthcare needs, of which 55.9% experienced unmet healthcare needs for reasons related to economic burden, 31.6% physical constraints, and 12.5% time constraints. As a result of the analysis, older people with chronic diseases were more likely to experience unmet healthcare needs if they were relatively low in age, low in education level, no spouse, low in household income, poor subjective health, complex chronic diseases, and functional restrictions. However, by major reasons for experiencing unmet healthcare needs, living in rural areas were more likely to experience unmet healthcare needs due to physical constraints, and those who participated in economic activities and who had were more likely to experience unmet healthcare needs due to time burden. These results were not derived when only unmet healthcare needs was set as the dependent variable. Conclusion: This study emphasizes the need for an approach by cause of unmet medical occurrence by suggesting that there are differences in influencing factors by reason for experiencing unmet healthcare needs.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
• /
• no.spc
• /
• pp.51-60
• /
• 2016

The forms of healthcare service delivery emerges from the interaction between technological progress and institutional changes. Building a healthcare system which enables effective and efficient patient care is a imperative to a sustainable operation of a society. Identifying of a promising medical technologies and diffusing them consists of the basic tasks of a good healthcare system. Inducing of a promising innovation in healthcare and utilization of the innovation requires a deep understanding of healthcare innovation system and delicate governmental intervention to the effective functioning of the system. Therefore, the support for R&D in healthcare field should be given to social and institutional technologies for the better organization of healthcare delivery and consumption system as well as basic and applied medical sciences.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
• /
• v.10 no.4
• /
• pp.1-22
• /
• 2005

Quality of care and patient safety have become today's agenda for healthcare industry in worldwide. This paper describes experiences to improve quality of care and patient safety in USA and identifies some future tasks for better implementation of quality improvement efforts. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for Korean healthcare system.

• Health Policy and Management
• /
• v.32 no.3
• /
• pp.245-246
• /
• 2022

Concerns about a global economic recession are rising following the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Accordingly, government entities, which are committed to overcome two barriers to severe inflation and economic recession, are showing high interest in spending management so as not to undermine fiscal soundness. Since the health care sector especially accounts for a large proportion of fiscal expenditure, it should be managed in a manner that the expense is appropriately spent. The National Health Insurance System and Healthcare System have secured international competitiveness and reliability by effectively responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Likewise, considerable efforts should be made to reorganize the welfare and healthcare systems so that they can be sustainable during the post-COVID-19 era and the recession.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
• /
• v.17 no.4
• /
• pp.340-350
• /
• 2016

The Medical Service Act of Korea describes a clinic as providing services primarily to outpatients, while a large general hospital provides specialized medical services requiring a high level of expertise for treating serious diseases. The portion of medical revenue for clinics has been decreasing gradually compared with large hospitals. This article proposes two fundamental medical policies to fix the distorted medical delivery system of Korea. Firstly, uniform additional medical remuneration rates based on the type of medial institution should be divided into outpatient additional rates and inpatient additional rates. Secondly, to normalize the function of clinics and large general hospitals, an outpatient medical target budget system should be introduced. Finally, to properly implement the proposal, it is important to establish healthcare policy-making governance. The success of policy implementation strongly depends on the participation and incentives of the government, suppliers, and patients. Healthcare policy-making governance must be designed to encompass this fact and improve quality of care.

• Journal of The Korea Institute of Healthcare Architecture
• /
• v.16 no.4
• /
• pp.41-48
• /
• 2010

Since 1970s' many hospitals have been built due to the economic growth and change of social policy in Korea. But, we had no sufficient data and design guidelines of planning and designing to get good design solutions. From the first paper on the healthcare architecture issued in 1974, many researches have been performed. Researches could be one of the efforts to solve the problems and satisfy the needs of those periods. Researches could reflect the characteristics of healthcare architecture of those periods. So in this paper 267 papers issued between 1974-2009 were analyzed to get the characteristics patterns of research periodically. This paper aims to provide a basic data for studying of history of healthcare architecture in Korea.

• Health Policy and Management
• /
• v.27 no.2
• /
• pp.186-189
• /
• 2017

On May 9th 2017, the 19th presidential election was held. This election was historically significant because of the impeachment of the former president. This election was held in a relatively short period of time, unlike the normal presidential elections. Therefore, there was not enough time to deliberate pledges for candidates and review pledges for the people. South Korea has suffered from many healthcare problems associated with low-birth rate, population aging, and low economic growth rate. In this paper, we compared the '10 main pledge' of the major five candidates of the 19th presidential election and discussed focusing on the healthcare issue. As a result of comparing the 10 main pledge of the major candidates, it was difficult to find healthcare parts whereas there were lots of welfare parts existed. We need enough time to review and discuss pledges in the next election.

• Journal of Information Processing Systems
• /
• v.4 no.3
• /
• pp.103-112
• /
• 2008

This paper proposes a policy adjuster-driven Grid workflow management system for collaborative healthcare platform, which supports collaborative heart disease diagnosis applications. To select policies according to service level agreement of users and dynamic resource status, we devised a policy adjuster to handle workflow management polices and resource management policies using policy decision scheme. We implemented this new architecture with workflow management functions based on policy quorum based resource management system for providing poincare geometrycharacterized ECG analysis and virtual heart simulation service. To evaluate our proposed system, we executed a heart disease identification application in our system and compared the performance to that of the general workflow system and PQRM system under different types of SLA.

• Health Policy and Management
• /
• v.27 no.4
• /
• pp.324-335
• /
• 2017

Background: The aim of this study is to analyze determinants of welfare attitudes toward healthcare services in South Korea, using three main theories: self-interest (positive welfare attitudes if the policy fulfills people's personal interests), symbolic attitudes (positive welfare attitudes if the person is politically progressive or egalitarian), and sociotropic perception (positive welfare attitudes if the person experienced positive aggregated collective experiences of societal events and trends regarding the policy). Although the definition of the welfare attitude is rather ambiguous in literatures, in this investigation, we operationalize the concept as the 'willingness to pay higher taxes to improve the level of health care services for all people in Korea' which shows individuals' actional propensity. Methods: We used the health module from the International Social Survey Program 2011 for the analysis (N= 1,391). Five logistic regression models were built successively using two variables for each theory to measure key concepts of self-interest, symbolic attitudes, and sociotropic perceptions as independent variables. Results: The result showed self-interest and symbolic attitudes factors to be strong determinants of welfare attitudes towards healthcare services in South Korea, whereas sociotropic perception factors have inconsistent effects. Conclusion: For a more politically elaborated healthcare reform in South Korea and elsewhere, there needs to be further research on various dimensions and determinants of welfare attitudes to understand popular basis of welfare expansion, especially in the era of inequality.