• Asian Journal of Business Environment
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.39-45
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• 2021

Purpose: This study is designed to investigate the extent and nature of climate change disclosure of listed pharmaceutical companies of Bangladesh. Research design, data and methodology: In order to perform this research, a content analysis methodology is used. A climate change disclosure index is constructed to examine 12 different climate change disclosure issues. Information is collected from the annual reports of 29 pharmaceutical companies listed on the Dhaka Stock Exchange for the year 2019. Results: This study finds that only 48.28% of the sample companies provided disclosure on at least one issue regarding climate change. 'Energy savings' is the mostly disclosed issue whereas 'Pollution control expenditure', 'Biodiversity conservation initiatives' are the least disclosed issues. Research implication: This study concludes 64.29% of the companies examined, use less than five sentences for climate change disclosure, which depicts unsatisfactory disclosure practices regarding climate change issues. Study findings would be helpful for different industries of Bangladesh to implement efficient climate change reporting Practice. Future studies can be conducted on other industries to obtain more comprehensive result.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.9-17
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• 2019

Objective: The objective of the present study was to evaluate the effects of implementing a systematic Drug Utilization Review (DUR) system on contraindicated drug use and pharmaceutical expenditures in Korea. Methods: A literature search was conducted using search engines such as PubMed, EMBASE, NDSL, and RISS for relevant systematic studies. The database search was performed and updated in April 2018. Two independent reviewers evaluated the abstracts to find potentially eligible articles. Results: In total, 1433 potentially eligible studies were selected, and 11 articles were eventually shortlisted for inclusion in the present review system. The outcome showed that contraindicated drug use decreased after implementation of the DUR system in Korea. The analysis also showed that the DUR system contributed to a reduction in pharmaceutical expenditures. Conclusions: Our study showed that implementing the DUR system reduced both contraindicated drug use and pharmaceutical expenditures in Korea.

• YAKHAK HOEJI
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• v.57 no.5
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• pp.369-375
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• 2013

Objective: Using the Korean Health Panel data (KHP) of 2008 and 2009, this paper analyzed the effect of antihypertension medication adherence on the changes in medical service utilization and medical expenditure in the next year. Method: Through a face-to-face interview survey, KHP has provided an extensive data on demographic characteristics, medical utilizations behavior, medical expenditure and health behaviors of the targeted households and their members since 2008. KHP is recognized as highly accurate regarding medical expenditure in that it makes the target households to record 'Health diary' whenever they use healthcare service, which could minimize their cognitive bias or memory distortion. The 2010 KHP data was based on the interview from 6,432 households and 19,697 household members. Two part model was used to explore the effects of medication adherence on medical use (logistic regression analysis) and medical expenditures (OLS). Result: Our study result demonstrated that the 74.7% of the patients who strictly adhere to their medication in both years, in 2008 and in 2009, were likely to use inpatient service in 2010. This shows the noncompliant patients were in fact use emergency service less than the compliant patients. Conclusion: Based on our analysis, this paper concludes that the high medication adherence of hypertensive patients could contribute to reduce the emergency service use. Therefore it is highly recommendable for the Korean government and the insurer, NHIS, to actively invest in developing education and promotion program to improve medication adherence among hypertensive patients.

• Journal of Digestive Cancer Research
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.104-107
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• 2023

The Ministry of Health and Welfare of Korea has implemented various social security programs to ensure a basic standard of living and raise overall quality of life for all citizens. The Korean social security system provides social insurance, public assistance, and social welfare services. To achieve adequate drug benefits, the Drug Management Department of Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRA) implement drug management duties including drug listing, upper price limit setting, scope of benefits, and post-factum management. When a manufacturer or an importer wants to apply for National Health Insurance (NHI) coverage of the drug that has obtained safety and efficacy approval, the pharmaceutical benefit assessment committee of HIRA evaluates the drug's clinical efficacy and cost-effectiveness to determine whether or not to include the drug into the benefit package. The benefit standards for a listed drug (ingredient) are set either for the whole permitted range or a part of range with conditions. To increase the coverage rate for new drugs, the listed drugs are regularly reviewed for their value. The status of listed drugs can be adjusted or eliminated from the benefit package if the clinical efficacy turns out to be insignificant. Therefore, through these pharmaceutical management procedures, high-quality drugs are provided at reasonable prices, which save healthcare expenditure by price determination and selective coverage in consideration of economic evaluation.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.18-27
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• 2018

Purposes: This study aims to investigate the policy effect of mandatory application of DRG for 7 disease groups in general and tertiary hospitals. Methodology: As DRG was fully implemented in July 2013, this study compares two periods before and after the change(from July 2012 to June 2013, and from July 2013 to June 2014). The benefit claim data of the National Health Insurance Service was used for the comparison. Target patients were those who visited general or tertiary hospitals between July 2012 to June 2014. For pharmaceutical consumption, Interrupted Time Series (ITS) analysis was used to see the effect of DRG mandatory application. Findings: The number of drugs prescribed per patient and pharmaceutical expenditure both showed significant reduction compared to before the DRG implementation. Practical Implications: This study used 2 sets of 1 year period data from before and after the full implementation of DRG to analyze pharmaceutical consumption. When the comparison data accumulates further, it would be possible to conduct more diverse analysis to assess policy effect and to provide way forward for the future.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.127-164
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• 2020

We perform an econometric assessment of the role that pharmaceutical innovation-the introduction and use of new drugs-has played in improving the health of Koreans, by investigating whether diseases for which more new drugs were launched had larger subsequent increases in longevity and smaller subsequent increases in hospitalization. Drugs launched during 1993-2012 are estimated to have increased mean age at death from all diseases by 1.71 years between 1995 and 2015 and 1.09 years between 2005 and 2015. We also estimate that new drugs increased the five-year relative survival rate from all cancers combined by 23.2 percentage points-78.5% of the total increase-between 1993-1995 and 2011-2015, and that new drugs launched during 2008-2010 reduced the number of hospital days in 2017 by 13.0 million. If the drugs launched during 2003-2012 had had no effect on other medical expenditure in 2015, the cost per life-year gained would not have exceeded 6332 USD. Therefore, even if we ignore the effect of new drugs on hospital utilization, the drugs launched during 2003-2012 were very cost-effective, overall. When reduced hospital utilization is accounted for, the evidence indicates that, in the long run, pharmaceutical innovation was cost-saving as well as life-year saving.

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

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.303-313
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• 2018

This study considers time series models to forecast drug expenditures in national health insurance. We adopt autoregressive error model (ARE) and transfer function model (TFM) with segmented level and trends (before and after 2012) in order to reflect drug price reduction in 2012. The ARE has only a segmented deterministic term to increase the forecasting performance, while the TFM explains a causality mechanism of drug expenditure with closely related exogenous variables. The mechanism is developed by cross-correlations of drug expenditures and exogenous variables. In both models, the level change appears significant and the number of drug users and ratio of elderly patients variables are significant in the TFM. The ARE tends to produce relatively low forecasts that have been influenced by a drug price reduction; however, the TFM does relatively high forecasts that have appropriately reflected the effects of exogenous variables. The ARIMA model without the exogenous variables produce the highest forecasts.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.263-272
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• 2018

Nonprescription drugs have become increasingly important in Korean healthcare. By leveraging lower-cost drugs and reducing expenditure associated with fewer physician visits, the nonprescription segment can deliver tremendous value to individual consumers and the Korean healthcare system. Many countries have provided simpler and more rapid routes to market entry for qualifying nonprescription drug products, using the established data on drug safety and efficacy, as well as public and professional opinion. In US, the FDA waived the pre-approval process for over-the-counter (OTC) drugs marketed through the OTC Monograph Process. In Australia and Canada, different OTC product application levels are defined, with a reduced level of assessment required when the risks to consumers are considered low. Japan established a new OTC evaluation system in 2014 to facilitate the Rx-to-OTC switch process. The legislative framework for medicinal products in the European Union allows for drugs to be approved with reference to appropriate bibliographic data for old active substances with well-established uses. Through a comparison of the regulatory framework and the requirements for nonprescription approval process in different countries, several ways to improve regulatory practice for the evaluation of nonprescription drugs in Korea have been suggested.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.73-80
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• 2020

Objective: The Australian Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) is a national drug subsidy program. Given the similarity and comprehensiveness of the Australian PBS and the Korean National Health Insurance (NHI) data, these data are increasingly used for pharmacoepidemiological investigations, as well as international comparative studies. This study aims to introduce the various sources of publicly available PBS data and provide a practical guide to researchers conducting drug utilization studies. Methods: We searched literature and websites to detail and compare the collection, structure, components, and characteristics of each PBS data format. We identified different characteristics of the PBS data from the Korean NHI claims data which are mainly owing to their unique co-payment policies and data collection processes. In addition, the utilization and expenditure of atorvastatin, a widely used treatment for hyperlipidemia, were analyzed using two different sources of PBS data and the different results were interpreted. Results: There exist differences in when data were collected or non-subsidized uses of medicine were included among sources of PBS data. Additionally, two countries have different cost sharing methods inmedicine subsidy scheme; co-payment in Australia and co-insurance in Korea. Therefore, it should be noted that prescriptions under co-payment are not included in some data sources in Australia. Conclusion: Despite several analytical challenges, open access and easy data management are the strengths of the PBS data sources. A detailed knowledge of the PBS data can ensure robust methodology and interpretation of pharmacoepidemiological investigations or international comparative studies.