• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.360-368
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• 1994

To this day, a number of quantitative analytical methods have been employed in clarifying regional characteristics in the discipline of geography. This paper attempted, as a part of application of those quantitative analyses, to make clear the urban functions and consequently the urban characteristics statistically by adopting newly-introduced CHAID, a sort of discriminant analyis technique. The processing of data was sonducted in two phases. To begin with, the urban functions were classified after designating twenty cities - the population of each city counting 250, 000 or more - as predictor variable, and at the same time four major urban functions like administration, marketing, finance and production as response variable. And then, preeminent functions of individual region were discriminated and concurrently classified by treating the remaining traffic, education, medicare, culture and transportation functions as predictor variable, and the following five regions as response variable: Metropolitan Seoul Area. Pusan region, Taegu region, Kwangju region and Chungcheong region. According to the result of this analysis, marketing and administration are emereed as meaningful functions in Seoul and Taegu respectively. As for the finance function only Pusan and Pucheon can be discriminated. Seoul, Pusan and Seongnam reveal their dominancy in production function. To take a look at the result of the latter analysis, the Metropolitan Seoul area shows, among other functions, strong traffic and finance functions. When it comes fo Pusan region, adminstration, education and finance functions are recorded as a leading ones, and Taegu region is preferable in education, medicare and transportation functions. In case of Kwangju region adminstration, production and education functions are discriminated from any other functions. Chungcheong region shows similar aspect with only traffic function replacing the production function of Kwangju region. Based on aforementioned anlysis, it can be said that the CHAID technique, which is capable of processing large amount of categorical data and, by presenting its outcome in the form of dendrogram, facilitates the interpretation work, is an effective, meaningful means to classify and discriminate certain geographical regions and their characteristics.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.121-147
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• 2004

Since the pilot program for a DRG-based prospective payment system was introduced in 1997, the performance of KDRGs has been one of hotly debated issues. The objectives of this study are to refine the classification algorithm of the KDRGs and to assess the improvement achieved by the refinement. The U.S. Medicare DRGs version 17.0 and the Australian Refined DRGs version 4.1 were reviewed to identify areas of possible impro-vement. Refined changes in the classification and result of date analyses were submitted to a panel of 48 physicians for their reviews and suggestions. The refinement was evaluated by the variance reduction in resource utilization achieved by the KDRG The database of 2,182,168 claims submitted to the Health Insurance Review Agency during 2002 was used for evaluation. As the result of the refinement, three new MDCs were introduced and the number of ADEGs increased from 332 to 674. Various age splits and two to four levels of severity classification for secondary diagnoses were introduced as well. A total of 1,817 groups were defined in the refined KDRGs. The variance reduction for charges of all patients increased from 48.2％ to 53.6％ by the refinement, and from 65.6％ to 73.1％ for non-outlier patients. The r-square for length of stays of all patients was increased from 28.3％ to 32.6％, and from 40.4％ to 44.9％ for non-outlier patients. These results indicated a significant improvement in the classification accuracy of the KDRG system.

• Korean Institute of Interior Design Journal
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• v.14 no.2 s.49
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• pp.142-152
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• 2005

It is estimated that the need to build health facilities for the elderly will grow in the near future as the Korean society is aging. Thus the study on the spatial composition of 22 facilities as well as on the cases of health facilities for the elderly in Japan, where public health and medicare for aged people are well taken care of, was conducted and the following are the results: 1. As of 2000, there was one facility for every 8,000 and 1,100 aged citizen under long-term care, and these facilities secured beds enough for $8\%$ of those who need long-term care. 2. The spatial composition was categorized into general living space, long-term care, management, provision, and home assistance, and housing was provided. Moreover, the space was divided according to their nature of use, the arrangement, the form of entrance into the building, moving line inside, the relationship with the health facilities and their characteristics are analyzed based on different users, managers, moving line including that of provision of food, the relationship between different spaces with different functions as well as on the relationship between locations of each space. 3. The total capacity, building area and actual area of the welfare facilities for the elderly are analyzed, and area per person, detailed area for each space, percentage of each living space for long-term care patients and characteristics of recuperation room are suggested.

• Women's Health Nursing
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.243-255
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• 2011

Purpose: This study was to provide understanding of the meaning of the transition experiences in pregnancy and childbirth among the married immigrant women. Methods: Data was collected through a face-to-face interview from 11 married immigrant women. Their conjugal lives were followed using the hermeneutics phenomenological method developed by van Manen: focusing on the meaning of lived experience. Results: The essential themes that were associated with the transition experiences of the participants' lives during pregnancy and childbirth were as follows: "entering a strange world filled with chaos and tension where they feel like outsiders", "being pregnant and giving birth in increasingly difficult times", "giving birth to a child, which strengthens them to persevere through painful life experiences", "receiving greater support from their families". Conclusion: It contributes a deeper understanding of the essence of the transition experiences of married immigrant women who undergo pregnancy and childbirth after immigration. On the basis of this understanding, this study would be likely to highlight the importance of establishing an appropriate health and medicare systems and the expert network of nursing care for immigrant wom.

• Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging
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• v.42 no.sup1
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• pp.172-176
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• 2008

FDG PET has been used as a diagnostic tool for localization of seizure focus for last 2-3 decades. In this article, the clinical usefulness of FDG PET in the management of patients with epilepsy has been reviewed, which provided the evidences to justify the medicare reimbursement for FDG PET in management of patients with epilepsy. Literature review demonstrated that FDG PET provides an important information in localization of seizure focus and determination whether a patients is a surgical candidate or not. FDG PET has been reported to have high diagnostic performance in localization of seizure focus in neocortical epilepsy as well as temporal lobe epilepsy regardless of the presence of structural lesion on MRI. Particularly, FDG PET can provide the additional information when the results from standard diagnositic modality such as interictal or video-monitored EEG, and MRI are inconclusive or discordant, and make to avoid invasive study. Furthermore, the presence of hypometabolism and extent of metabolic extent has been reported as an important predictor for seizure free outcome. However, studies suggested that more accurate localization and better surgical outcome could be expected with multimodal approach by combination of EEG, MRI, and functional studies using FDG PET or perfusion SPECT rather than using a single diagnostic modality in management of patients with epilepsy. Complementary use of FDG PET in management of epilepsy is worth for good surgical outcome in epilepsy patients.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.45-65
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• 2004

The rapid increase in PET devices and its utilization in Korea necessitates relevant health insurance policies based on scientific evidence, including economic evaluation of PET in clinical conditions. However, there is very little amount of evidence regarding PET, and the first step would be to establish research priorities to give a momentum for research and assure efficient use of research capacities. To this end, we conducted a two-round Delphi study, which produced stable consensus on about top 10 oncology indications for research, which included lymphoma staging, colorectal cancer recurrence/restaging, lung cancer staging, and other conditions. The results were largely consistent with current U.S. Medicare reimbursement indications and are expected to lead to relevant researches and evidence-based health policies on PET reimbursement and regulation.

• Journal of Society of Preventive Korean Medicine
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.65-76
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• 2013

Objectives : Aim of this study is to contribute to establishment of the Traditional Korean Medicine (TKM) policies in the future. Final assessment for 12 of the forecasting projects was carried out on the TKM policies that deduced by professionals in 1996 whether or not to realize in 2013. Methods : We investigated governmental and private research projects, reports and papers, and laws and systems on the forecasting projects. We reviewed them through the Traditional Korean Medicine Information Portal OASIS (http://oasis.kiom.re.kr), Korean studies Information Service System (KISS) (http://kiss.kstudy.com/) and DBpia (http://www.dbpia.co.kr/), Akomnews(http://www.akomnews.com/), THE MINJOK MEDICINE NEWS(http://www.mjmedi.com/), Ministry of Government Legislation(http://www.law.go.kr/). Results : Of the 12 forecasting projects, five were judged as 'realization', four were as 'partial realization' and three were as 'un-realization', The realization rate was 75.0%. Three un-realized projects included the TKM insurance coverage for various herbal medicines, leadership secure on medical technicians and commercialization of the TKM managing system on senior medicare policy. Realization of the future forecasting TKM policy projects was decided depending on conditions such as the importance, domestic capability levels, principal agents, methods and restrains. Conclusions : Continuous studies and new developed forecasting projects for the TKM policies will be required to realize the projects in the future.

• The Korean Journal of Health Service Management
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.221-232
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• 2013

This study aims to analyze the effect of hypertense, diabetic patients, managerial characteristics on their depression and suicidal thinking. Thus, this study selected 6,217 adults over the age of 19 from the 5th first-year data of Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey conducted by KCDC(Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) in 2010. As factors having effect on their suicidal thinking, unmarried patients(p=.000), middle school(p=.045), high school(p=.015), college and higher(p=.018), medicare(p=.045), hypertense(p=.042), exercise walking irregularly(p=.021), sense of depression(p=.035) showed a higher rate of suicidal thinking which were found to be statistically significant variables. Hypertense show a higher rate of suicidal thinking than normal people. Accordingly, it is necessary not only to pay attention to establishing plans to provide Hypertense and Diabetic patients with medical treatments, but to have more concern about their mental health so that they may be provided with a political support future.

• Journal of Korean society of Dental Hygiene
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.243-261
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• 2006

Priority setting in national health insurances in major advanced countries and the nation was investigated to draw the criteria for priority setting and suggest the most rational criteria for dental insurance so as to help secure the efficiency of medicare financing and individual's health right and also elevate medical consumers' satisfaction with health insurance. 1. Priorities in national health insurance are different from country to country, depending on the medical security systems, priority introducing conditions, and social environment, but have many common factors. 2. The priority setting criteria for national health insurance in those countries include the following in common: the efficiency, equity, and cost effect of treatment, emergency of treatment, consumption of expense, efficacy of treatment, patient's receptiveness, patient's demand, severity of disease, and patient's responsibility for the disease. 3. In oral diseases, severe diseases including oral cavity cancer are low in rate, and in-hospital treatments are few. From the above findings, it is suggested that dental insurance should establish discriminative criteria for priority setting by reflecting the aspects of dental diseases and system difference between dental and other health insurances and taking account of efficiency of treatment through prevention, cost effect, prevalence and incidence of generalized diseases, and individual's financing burden.

• YAKHAK HOEJI
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• v.54 no.3
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• pp.205-214
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• 2010

This study aimed to evaluate the patterns of inappropriate medication use and inappropriate dosage in elderly patients in Korea. A retrospective study was performed for the elderly 65 years or older admitted from January 2007 to December 2007 in a medical center, Seoul, Korea. Potentially inappropriate medication (PIM) use in the elderly was evaluated using Beers criteria. Eighteen drugs out of Beers criteria were included in the formulary of the institute. Inappropriate dosage was set using Beers criteria, CMS (the Centers for Medicare& Medicaid Services) guideline, Geriatric Dosage Handbook. As results, the patients with PIM were 2,172 during the study period. The commonly used inappropriate medications were drugs for the nervous system (n=1237, 44.78%), the alimentary System (n=663, 24.54%) and the cardiovascular system (n=494, 18.28%). The elderly patients with prescription of inappropriate dosage were 10% out of patients with PIMs. The commonly inappropriate dosage drugs were digoxin (n=75, 27.27%), diazepam (n=70, 22.55%) and ferrous sulfate (n=66, 24.00%). Logistic regression analysis showed the number of PIM, days of hospital stay as predictors related to inappropriate dosage use. In conclusion, CNS drugs were frequently prescribed as PIM and inappropriate dosages were identified. It is needed to develop a means of decreasing adverse drug events in elderly.