• The Korean Journal of Emergency Medical Services
• /
• v.27 no.1
• /
• pp.127-137
• /
• 2023

Purpose: This study aimed to analyze the treatment outcomes according to the socioeconomic factor of patients who visited the emergency room. Methods: This study conducted frequency analysis, percentage analysis, and Fisher's exact test analysis method, using the R 4.1.2 program based on the 2019 data from the Korea Health Panel. Results: Among the treatment results of 1,648 patients, 392 patients were hospitalized or transferred to other hospitals, 845 were discharged after treatment, 224 were discharged, and 7 died. The Fisher's exact test of treatment outcomes and socioeconomic factors was not statistically significant for status of the worker and employment relationship, but was significant for the housing, household, economic activity, and insurance types, and marital status and education. Conclusion: The results of this study indicate that it is necessary to conduct follow up studies on socioeconomic factors to provide basic data that can contribute to fairness and equity in the health care field.

• Health Policy and Management
• /
• v.24 no.1
• /
• pp.56-70
• /
• 2014

Background: Korea shows rapid population aging and increase in healthcare service use and expenditure. Also, this would be accelerated because of the baby boomers who will be 65 years old and more in 2020. Chronic disease is another reason that increases the use of healthcare service and expenditure of the middle- and old-aged households. Catastrophic health expenditure (CHE) is the index which can indicate the households' burden of health spending. Despite the importance, there are few studies on CHE of middle- and old-aged households and especially no panel study yet. This is the reason that this study is carried out. Methods: This study used 3-year data from the Korea Welfare Panel Study conducted from 2009 to 2011. We defined CHE if a household's health expenditure is equal or greater than the threshold value if income remaining after subsistence needs has been met. We used 4 different threshold values which are 10%, 20%, 30%, and 40%. In order to look at the households which experienced CHE, we conducted panel logit analysis after correspondence analysis and conditional transition probability analysis. Results: This study showed three notable results. First, there has been a difference among age groups, which implies that the older people are, the more easily they can experience CHE. Second, the households with no private insurance are shown to have a higher CHE occurrence rate. Lastly, there has been a significant difference among the kinds of chronic diseases. The households which have cancer, cerebrovascular disease, and heart disease have a higher CHE occurrence rate. However, the households with diabetes have no significant effects to CHE occurrence. Also, hypertension has a negative effect to the occurrence. Conclusion: With the results, it can be implied that elderly people with chronic disease are more needed in medical coverage and healthcare. Also, private insurance can play its role in protecting households from CHE. Therefore, it needs to conduct studies on CHE especially about different age groups, private insurance, and chronic disease.

• Health Policy and Management
• /
• v.25 no.2
• /
• pp.97-106
• /
• 2015

Background & Methods: The purpose of this research is to estimate the efficiency of the pharmaceutical firms and the determinants of their efficiency. Stochastic frontier analysis(SFA) and panel study are applied to the data of 60 domestic pharmaceutical firms from 2006 to 2012. Results & Conclusion: First, the result of the stochastic frontier analysis shows that overall efficiency of the pharmaceutical firms is increasing as time goes by. However, if firms are classified by the scale, the larger firms show more efficiency and if classified by the degree of innovativeness, the innovative firms show more efficiency compared to the non-innovative firms. This evidences show that the scale and R&D investment have significant relationships with the efficiency of the pharmaceutical firms. Therefore, it is necessary to increase the national level of investment for the fundamental researches to vitalize R&D of the new drugs. Second, the result of estimation of the determinants of efficiency shows that the firms with larger sales promotion expenses and entertainment expenses have less efficiency compared to the other firms. This can be explained by the structural characteristics of the small generic pharmaceutical firms. Therefore, the government had better make the pharmaceutical firms to reduce sales promotion and entertainment expenses and increase R&D expenses by introducing systems such as global budgeting system on medicine or reference pricing system.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
• /
• v.9 no.4
• /
• pp.191-196
• /
• 2022

From several socioeconomic perspectives, the present health crisis can be connected to the 2008 financial and economic catastrophe. Governments worldwide are working hard to keep the markets in check, as evidence suggests that the health crisis may soon become an economic crisis. This paper aims to analyze the effect of COVID-19 on the selected stock market. Using a panel of daily COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths and the stock market from 22 developing countries, we exploit an oil price as a shock to the stock market and examine the effect of COVID-19 on the slowdown of the stock market. We find a negative and significant impact of COVID-19 on the stock market in the first stage till April. However, there is no net influence on the stock market downturn when we extend the period. However, further study suggests that the outbreak's negative influence on the selected stock market has diminished and has begun to decline as of mid-April. As a result of the COVID-19 effect on the chosen stock, our findings imply that the government in the chosen market should consider a regulatory mechanism to reduce the stock market slowdown induced by the pandemic COVID-19.

• Proceedings of the Korean Statistical Society Conference
• /
• 2002.11a
• /
• pp.265-272
• /
• 2002

An Integer-valued autoregressive integrated (INARI) model is introduced to eliminate stochastic trend and seasonality from time series of count data. This INARI extends the previous integer-valued ARMA model. We show that it is stationary and ergodic to establish asymptotic normality for conditional least squares estimator. Optimal estimating equations are used to reflect categorical and serial correlations arising from panel count data and variations arising from three random processes for obtaining observation into estimation. Under regularity conditions for martingale sequence, we show asymptotic normality for estimators from the estimating equations. Using cancer mortality data provided by the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), we apply our results to estimate the probability of cells classified by 4 causes of death and 6 age groups and to forecast death count of each cell. We also investigate impact of three random processes on estimation.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.18 no.10
• /
• pp.99-110
• /
• 2018

As interest in adolescent and children's health risks increases, there is an increase in subscriptions to indemnity private health insurance. The purpose of this study was to investigate determinants of purchasing indemnity private health insurance. We conducted panel logit regression analysis on the sample of 4,567 adolescent and children using Korean Health Panel data from 2009 to 2015. As a result, it was analyzed that the participation of private health insurance for children and adolescents was affected not only by the characteristics of children and adolescents (age, birth order, residence, disability) but also by the characteristics of father (indemnity, disability, chronic disease) and mother (age difference between her and her children, indemnity, unmet needs) and the economic level of households (income). In views of this study, it is necessary to continuously implement policies to strengthen the healthcare of children and adolescents in order to alleviate the anxiety about the health risks of children and the burden of medical expenses caused by late marriages and maternal births. In particular, it is necessary to consider policies for multi-child families and vulnerable classes.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
• /
• v.52 no.1
• /
• pp.21-29
• /
• 2019

Objectives: The Regional Cardiocerebrovascular Center (RCCVC) Project designated local teaching hospitals as RCCVCs, in order to improve patient outcomes of acute cardiocerebrovascular emergencies by founding a regional system that can adequately transfer and manage patients within 3 hours. We investigated the effects of RCCVC establishment on treatment volume and 30-day mortality. Methods: We constructed a panel dataset by extracting all acute myocardial infarction cases that occurred from 2007 to 2016 from the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service claims data, a national and representative source. We then used a panel fixed-effect model to estimate the impacts of RCCVC establishment on patient outcomes. Results: We found that the number of cases of acute myocardial infarction that were treated increased chronologically, but when the time effect and other related covariates were controlled for, RCCVCs only significantly increased the number of treatment cases of female in large catchment areas. There was no statistically significant impact on 30-day mortality. Conclusions: The establishment of RCCVCs increased the number of treatment cases of female, without increasing the mortality rate. Therefore, the RCCVCs might have prevented potential untreated deaths by increasing the preparedness and capacity of hospitals to treat acute myocardial infarction patients.

• Korean Journal of Digital Imaging in Medicine
• /
• v.8 no.1
• /
• pp.27-32
• /
• 2006

The rapid development in digital acquisition technology in radiography has not been accompanied by information regarding optimum radiolographic technique for use with an amorphus silicon flat panel detector. The purpose of our study was to compared imaging characteristics and image quality of an amorphus silicon flat panel detectors for digital chest radiography. All examinations were performed by using an amorphus silicon flat panel detector. Chest radiographs of an chest phantom were obtained with peak kilovoltage values of 60$\sim$150 kVp. Published data ell the effect of x-ray beam energy on imaging characteristics and image qualify when using an amorphus silicon flat panel detector. It is important that radiographers are aware of optimum kVp selection for an amorphus silicon flat panel detector system, particularly for the commonly performed chest examination.

• The Korean Journal of Health Service Management
• /
• v.8 no.3
• /
• pp.13-25
• /
• 2014

This research was performed to investigate the characteristics and determination factors on tertiary hospital inpatients. The used data was the four waves of Korea Health Panel(2008, 2009, 2010, 2011), and the number of subjects was 4,430 cases of tertiary and general hospital admission. The statistical methodology used in the study is the logistic regression model. The significant affecting factors in utilizing tertiary hospital admission were gender, marital status, education, household income, residence region and ICD-10 classification. Man, graduating college/university, married, high-income were socio-economic affecting factors in tertiary hospital admission. Medical need factor of ICD-10 classification and residence region of inpatients was also significant affecting factors in tertiary hospital admission. The 81.4% of inpatients at tertiary hospital had chronic disease and the 12.9% of inpatients readmitted, the 68.2% had a selecting doctor and the only 26.7% of inpatients reinforced by private medical insurance. This study recommended the Korean government to provide proper rule for tertiary hospital admission in order to improve the equity and efficiency of health care system.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
• /
• v.56 no.6
• /
• pp.495-503
• /
• 2023

Objectives: While older adults using community care services are known to be vulnerable for depression, community care utilization (CCU) may help to improve the mental health of these elderly. To date, however, it is much less clear how CCU affects depressive symptoms in the elderly population. This study focuses on the trajectory of depressive symptoms across years of CCU among older adults in Korea. Methods: Using the 2006-2019 Korean Welfare Panel Survey, this study is focused on elderly born in 1940 or earlier and selected 3281 persons for baseline interviews in 2006. This consisted of 35 800 person-year observations during a period of 14 years. Panel data analysis were employed to construct years of CCU. Results: After controlling for covariates, linear term of years using community care was negatively associated with depressive symptoms, but a quadratic term was positively significant. The trajectory of depressive symptoms across the years of CCU follows a U-shaped curve. Older adults in the first year of using community care reported the highest level of depressive symptoms. However, a significant and steady decrease in depressive symptoms was observed during the following 9 years of CCU, which then gradually increased. The level of depressive symptoms at the 14th year of using community care remains significantly lower than the level at the outset of its utilization. Conclusions: This finding implies that CCU could be beneficial for improving mental health among older adults.