• Health Policy and Management
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.125-141
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of provider practice patterns in the difference in health expenditure between the two types of patients: Health Insurance and Medical Aid type 1. The study used the outpatient claim data for all Medicaid and health insurance patients of hypertension who received medical services from 8,454 primary care physicians during the first half of 2006. The data were stratified by patient's gender and age for the two groups of patients who received care from the same physician. The dependent variables were the differences in medical expenditure per case, patient days per case and medical expenditure per patient day between Medicaid patients and health insurance patients. Empirical results showed that physician characteristics, such as physicians under age 50, greater proportion of pediatric Medicaid patients, lower proportion of new Medicaid patients and the greater number of comorbidity of Medicaid patients are associated with the greater difference between the two types of patients (i.e., greater expenditure of Medicaid patients relative to health insurance patients). This study shows that factors associated with provider practice patterns need to be taken into account in Medicaid policy.

• 대한예방의학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2001.10a
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• pp.173-174
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• 2001

• Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.18-25
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• 2017

Purpose: Adequate control of breakthrough pain is essential for patients with cancer. Managing breakthrough pain mainly depends on understanding the concept of breakthrough pain and the proper usage of rescue medication by physicians. This study aims to assess the attitudes and practice patterns of palliative physicians in managing breakthrough pain for patients in Korea. Methods: This study was based on data from the 2014 breakthrough cancer pain survey conducted by the Korean Society for Hospice and Palliative Care. One hundred physicians participated in the online survey. Among total 33 self-reported questionnaires, twelve items were selected in this analysis. Results: Rapid onset of action is the main influencing factor in selecting rescue opioids. Oral oxycodone (65%) and parenteral morphine (27%) are commonly used. A few physicians (3%) prefer to use transmucosal fentanyl. The percentage of physicians prescribing oral oxycodone due to its rapid onset of action is just 21.5%, whereas the percentage of physicians using parenteral morphine is 81.5%. Two thirds of respondents (66%) answered that breakthrough pain is not well controlled with rescue medications. Conclusion: There is a gap between the needs of physicians in terms of the perceived difficulties of managing breakthrough cancer pain and their practice patterns selecting rescue medications.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.26 no.4 s.44
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• pp.614-627
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• 1993

It is well known that a physician's personal characteristic affects his practice pattern. Furthermore, a physician's specialty has powerful influences on his practice pattern. However, despite the fact that specialization has received the most attention for its influence on physician's service behavior, few studies have been conducted on the variations of contents and volume of physician's services. This study has intended to identify factors influencing the practice variations according to various physician characteristics. There are some other evidences that medical care providers are different in using of health services and resources in Korea. Four physician characteristics were selected for the analysis, two demographical factors, age and sex, and two practice factors, place of practice and medical specialty. Also, three indicators of service amount (total amount of insurance claim bill, number of visits per case, number of prescriptions per case) were selected. From the pool of insurance claims for ambulatory care received by the Korean National Federation of Medical Insurance(NFMI), 84,898 cases were randomly sampled. In the meantime using physician database of NFMI, 613 general practitioners (GP), 107 regular family physicians (FP), 483 'grandfather' family physicians(GFP), and 1,157 specialist practitioners(SP) were randomly sampled. Their different practice contents were compared concerning the specialty, age groups, sex, and practice sites (urban-rural) Specialist physicians tend to provide more costly care than do generalists. General practitioners and family physicians usually make fewer following visits and prescriptions. Age is also the important factor in determining the amount of services, which is highest at the physician's age group of 40's. Female doctors and urban practitioners use much more resources than their counterparts respectively. Research findings suggest that physician's characteristics particularly the specialty can affect practice patterns and resource utilizations. Other characteristics such as age and sex are not controllable but physician's specialty is relatively easily controllable during the entire phases of policy implementation. This is all the more true in the individual's initial decision of his specialty. Specialization therefore should receive policymaker's attention for its potential influence on medical care utilization and health care expenditure.

• Journal of Korean Traditional Oncology
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.17-27
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• 2021

Objective: This study aimed to evaluate which information of cancer patients should be collected for the Korean medicine cancer registry in order to assess the efficacy and safety of Korean medicine (KM) treatment and to identify Korean medical prognostic predictors. Methods: A total of fifteen Korean medical specialists completed an online survey questionnaire including items about general characteristics of cancer patients and clinical practice patterns. Results: The four main types of cancer at Korean medical hospitals were breast, lung, stomach, and colorectal cancer. The majority of patients with cancer at Korean medical hospitals were in the advanced or metastatic stage (50.0%). The prominent purposes of KM treatment were to alleviate cancer-related symptoms, reduce the side effects of conventional therapy, and improve quality of life. The major options for treatment were traditional herbal medicine (THM), acupuncture, moxibustion, thermotherapy, pharmacoacupuncture, and meditation, with THM being the most frequently used (35.7%). Almost all Korean medical specialists (93.9%) used syndrome differentiation in clinical practice and identified over half the cancer patients as deficiency syndrome (57.2%). Conclusion: Physicians considered the primary goal of KM treatment for cancer patients to be symptom management since advanced or metastatic stage patients were the majority at Korean medical hospitals. THM were the most common treatment option and syndrome differentiation was used by almost all physicians. Further research is needed to monitor and ensure optimal KM treatment for patients with cancer.

• Journal of Genetic Medicine
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.72-78
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• 2018

Purpose: Physicians' attitudes may have a strong influence on women's decision regarding prenatal screening options. The aim of this study is to assess the physicians' attitudes toward prenatal screening for fetal aneuploidy including non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) in South Korea. Materials and Methods: Questionnaires were distributed and collected at several obstetrics-gynecological conferences and meetings. The questionnaire included 31 multiple choice and 5 fill-in-the-blank questions. Seven questions requested physicians' demographic information, 17 questions requested information about the NIPT with cell-free fetal DNA, and 12 questions requested information about general prenatal screening practices. Results: Of the 203 obstetricians that completed the survey. In contrast with professional guidelines recommending the universal offering of aneuploidy screening, only 53.7% answered that prenatal aneuploidy testing (screening and/or invasive diagnostic testing) should be offered to all pregnant women. Physicians tended to have positive attitudes toward the clinical application of NIPT as both primary and secondary screening methods for patients at high-risk for fetal trisomy. However, for patients at average-risk for fetal trisomy, physicians tended to have positive attitudes only as a secondary screening method. Physicians with more knowledge about NIPT were found to tend to inform their patients that the detection rate of NIPT is higher. Conclusion: This is the first study to investigate expert opinion on prenatal screening in South Korea. Education of physicians is essential to ensure responsible patient counseling, informed consent, and appropriate management after NIPT.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.25 no.4 s.40
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• pp.357-373
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• 1992

After medical insurance came into effect in Korea, health care system has undergone tremendous changes. Changing patterns of newly established clinics is one of them. To investigate changes and trends, a total of 10,184 clinics which were newly established from 1981 to 1990 were analysed. Data were obtained from the file of contracting medical facilities of the Federation of Medical Insurance Societies. The proportion of newly establishied clinics has increased gradually, so that they amount to 13% of the total medical facilities in Korea. Meanwhile, the number of newly established medium-size hospitals and general hospitals have decreased. The number of newly established clinics per 100,000 populations has increased in the all areas, but the rate of increase has decreased in the cities except in 6 major cities in 1990. The rate of increase in newly established clinics surpasses that of population increase. This study has identified the trend of young physicians' early driving into their solo medical practice than before. This indicates chance of the medical specialty training nowadays toughen due to the limited openings in residency programs. However, the sex ratio of physicians at newly established clinics has not changed. The decreasing tendency to open medical practice without beds and the increasing size of clinics are found in this study(The size has been measured in terms of medical manpower, of beds, and of medical equipment in this study). Two thirds of general practitioners have opened their clinics without beds, although such trend has been less in the case of specialists. All three indicators show increasing size, especially in the case of rural clinics. However, among them, the number of medical equipments has increased most significantly from 8.9 items in 1981 to 12.9 in 1990.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.1-25
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• 2005

Legislation on pharmaceutical reimbursement decision using economic evaluation results was made in Korea in fm, but has yet to be fully implemented. We evaluated the quality of Korean economic evaluation studies of pharmaceuticals to understand gaps between legislation and implementation. From this evaluation, we propose policy options that might strengthen the research Infrastructure In order to support such studies. We reviewed 23 published studies for drugs conducted between 1996 and 2004. Evaluation criteria included methodological characteristics, healthcare system characteristics, population characteristics, and applicability of results. Large variation in study quality was observed, particularly with study design, outcome data, treatment patterns and interpretation. Korean clinical data used was mostly from observational studies of 1-2 hospitals. Foreign data was extracted from clinical trials that did not Include Asian population and their selection criterion was not clarified. With respect to treatment patterns, medical records and hospital bills were used without adjustment regarding area, hospital type, and others. And next frequent situation relied on expert opinion from academic physicians in specialty practice. preference measures, when used, were not elicited from the Korean population. $78.3\%$ of studies did not clarify the funding source. If the Korean economic evaluation policy is to provide meaningful data for decision makers, the quality of cost-effectiveness studies will need to improve dramatically. This may involve access to or creation of better data, more diverse funding, unproved training of researchers and evaluators, and partnerships with technology manufacturers.

• The Korean Journal of Pain
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.152-161
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• 2014

Background: According to the reports of the World Health Organization 20% of world population suffer from pain and 33% of them suffer to some extent that they cannot live independently. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study which was conducted in the emergency department (ED) of Valiasr Hospital of Arak, Iran, in order to determine the causes of delay in prescription of analgesics and to construct a model for prediction of circumstances that aggravate oligoanalgesia. Data were collected during a period of 7 days. Results: Totally, 952 patients participated in this study. In order to reduce their pain intensity, 392 patients (42%) were treated. Physicians and nurses recorded the intensity of pain for 66.3% and 41.37% of patients, respectively. The mean (SD) of pain intensity according to visual analogue scale (VAS) was 8.7 (1.5) which reached to 4.4 (2.3) thirty minutes after analgesics prescription. Median and mean (SD) of delay time in injection of analgesics after the physician's order were 60.0 and 45.6 (63.35) minutes, respectively. The linear regression model suggested that when the attending physician was male or intern and patient was from rural areas the delay was longer. Conclusions: We propose further studies about analgesics administration based on medical guidelines in the shortest possible time and also to train physicians and nurses about pain assessment methods and analgesic prescription.

• Korean Journal of Health Education and Promotion
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.1-12
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• 2012

Objectives: Several practice guidelines recommended both medication and behavior modification to control hypertension. The objective of this study was to analyze ambulatory care utilization pattern and related factors. Methods: A retrospective cohort study was conducted among 45,267 new users who initiated treatment with hypertensive drugs in 2003. Korean National Health Insurance Claims Data was used to study the medical care utilization behavior and related factors after treatment initiation for up to four years. Taking prescription was considered as medical care utilization. Results: More than 20% of patients discontinued visiting physicians for prescription after initiating antihypertensive drug therapy. The average number of institutions visited by patients was about 1.3 annually. Clinic was the most frequently visited institution by patients. In GEE analysis, probability of continuous visit one institution after initiating antihypertensive drug treatment increased in patients who were women, old, have comorbidity, visited clinic or hospital mainly in previous year. Conclusions: Young hypertensive male patients who have no major comorbidity showed high possibility to discontinue medical service utilization. It is necessary to educate these targeted patients about importance of hypertension management in early stage after treatment initiation.