• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
• /
• v.25 no.3
• /
• pp.38-52
• /
• 2020

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to suggest the main functions and implications of public hospitals to effectively respond to the future epidemic crisis based on analyzing the accessibility to designated Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) medical institutions of Seoul and examining the main features of the quarantine of Seoul municipal hospitals. Method: To analyze the response and function of Seoul municipal hospitals, we reviewed the Infectious Disease Control and Prevention ACT, 258 articles of Seoul Metropolitan Government press releases from January to the end of April, 48 articles of Seoul Metropolitan Government's daily newsletters, 2019 Health Bureau Budget report. We also referred to internal data of Seoul Children's Hospital, Seoul Seobuk Hospital, and Seoul Eunpyeong Hospital during the same period. Besides, the accessibility to medical institutions was analyzed by using the COVID-19 data which was announced daily basis. Results: The accessibility of COVID-19 patients living in the Southeastern part of Seoul to a medical institutions was 16.2km on a distance basis, and it was the lowest accessibility among four regions of Seoul since it took about 40 minutes by car. On the other hand, patients living in the Northeast part had the highest accessibility, as the access to medical institutions was 10.7km and 27 minutes by car. Also, the main functions of the municipal hospital of Seoul against COVID-19 were to shift the public hospital function to COVID-19 patients only hospitals, to perform the epidemiological investigation by medical doctors, and to support the operation of self-isolation facilities, community treatment centers and triage rooms of community health centers. Conclusion: Through the experience of COVID-19, we suggested that the functions of public hospitals will be reorganized as the reinforcement of infectious disease treatment and mental health for quarantined patients, cooperation with private hospitals, supporting for strengthening community health capacity and preparation for another epidemic.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
• /
• v.3 no.1
• /
• pp.238-260
• /
• 1998

This article describes the theoretical foundations of government policy for hospitals in terms of correcting market failure and enhancing equity. It then discusses the characteristics that desirable payment systems should have, and the effects of the DRG-based prospective payment system on hospital behavior, its financial performance, hospital industry, and health care expenditure. The rationales and impacts of other public policies for hospitals such as antitrust and fair trade regulation, dissemination of practice guidelines and hospital mortality information, regulation of hospital capital investment, and tax policy are also discussed.

• The Korean Journal of Health Service Management
• /
• v.6 no.3
• /
• pp.13-27
• /
• 2012

This study aimed to identify the effects of contents, to find out the development approaches of promotion and contribute to increase the expectation on medical institutions and wills to use and improve the customer satisfaction on homepages of such medical institutions by analysis on the contents of hospital homepage. This research performed the frequency analysis, cross analysis, t-test correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis and came to the conclusion. In accordance with the research results, since the university hospital homepages had more contents than the homepage of general hospitals and national and public hospitals, the university hospital homepage provided sufficient information to visitors and tried to satisfy the customers and activate the hospital promotion using the homepage contents. On the contrary, the homepage of general hospitals and national and public hospitals had insufficient contents and unique and differentiated contents were not sufficiently provided. On the basis of the results of this study, further study on the approaches to improve the contents of homepage of general hospitals and national and public hospitals will be of great help to activate the hospital promotion by increasing the average number of visitors and page views. Furthermore, it is required to make every endeavor for systematic management and operation and research on promotion using the homepage contents.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
• /
• v.11 no.10
• /
• pp.203-215
• /
• 2013

This study calculated meta Malmquist indices and their bootstraped estimates and then decomposed them into technical efficiency change(TEC), technology change(TC), pure technology catch up(PTCU), frontoer catch up(FCU), using annual data set of general hospitals from year 2007 to 2011 collected by Korean Hospital Association and then analyzed productivity change and technology gap of Korean general hospitals. The results and implications were as follows below. First, public general hospitals showed higher meta technical efficiencies than private general hospitals while exhibited lower technology gap ratio which meant a few large private general hospitals led the whole general hospitals. Second, group productivity of private general hospitals increased larger than public general hospitals due to the differences of PTCU rather than FCU. But, there was no statistically significant differences for technical efficiency, productivity change, technology gap. Thus, public general hospitals played the same role as the private general hospitals in terms of the number of patients treated. But, considering financial hardships of public general hospitals, public hospitals needed to share and learn medical and managerial skills of the best practice of private general hospitals.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.14 no.1
• /
• pp.318-325
• /
• 2014

The aim is to analyze a performance evaluation of local governmental public hospitals. Data were collected from public disclosure system DB of National Tax Service on 15 July 2013. Twenty-two income statements of local governmental public hospitals were analyzed using descriptive statistic analysis. The analyzing factors were medical operating profit, contribution margin, and trend of operating profit. The important result was that the medical operating profit was negative, average medical operating profit was -4,678.9 million won. However, the contribution margin was positive in all local governmental public hospitals, and average contribution margin was 12,572.5 million won. The trend of operating profit was positive in 15 local governmental public hospitals between 2011 and 2012. The average increased operating profit was 1,299.1 million won. Through this result, we suggest that not only individual public health hospital perspective, but also the enterprise wide perspective like nation was significantly considered to make decision of closure or maintain of local governmental public hospitals.

• Journal of The Korea Institute of Healthcare Architecture
• /
• v.20 no.2
• /
• pp.37-45
• /
• 2014

Purpose: Numerous researches about healthcare buildings have been performed however, they were mainly focused on convenience or healing condition for medical treatments. The hospitals consume energy and generate $CO_2$ as twice as the residential or commercial buildings do(Lim, et al., 2010a:154). The public regional hospitals are especially in serious conditions. They are more than 20 years old in average. Energy efficiency and environmental friendliness in the public regional hospitals are far behind ones in private sectors. Even though the ministry of health & welfare is supporting renovation of the builidngs and enhancement of the facilities every year, it is not integrated including sustainibility. In this study, we investigates current conditions of the regional public hospital in envrionment-friendly standpoint, especially focused on Chungcheong Province area Hospitals. Methods: we investigates current conditions of the regional public hospital in envrionment-friendly standpoint, especially focused on Chungcheong Province area Hospitals. The study was executed by qualitative and quantitative evaluations with site inspection, drawing analysis and interviews. Results: Through this study, we found that the Chungnam regional public hospitals can be environmentally improved by management plans and programs. Implications: Based on this analysis, Korean Green Building Certification for healthcare facilities will be developed in near future.

• YAKHAK HOEJI
• /
• v.57 no.2
• /
• pp.150-159
• /
• 2013

A study was performed to identify current drug shortages, assess impact of drug shortages on public hospitals and patients, and investigate needs of pharmacists for a drug shortage list. An e-mail survey was sent to the pharmacists of 13 national public hospitals. Total 61.5% of public hospitals has 10 or fewer drugs a year in short supply. Shortages involved mood drugs, anti-tumor drugs, analgesics, antibiotics and etc. in 2012. Among them 75.0% was prescription drugs and the other 25.0% was non-prescription drugs. 79.2% was domestic products and 20.8% was imported drugs. Only 12.5% was injections. Less than 3 pharmacists usually spent within 3 hours managing one drug shortage. Since a single item for a certain medicine may raise risk of drug shortages, it's needed to consider developing manuals, laying up medicine stocks and holding plural medicines for drug shortages in public hospitals. Main information resources of drug shortages are wholesalers or manufacturers. But the information appeared to be not only inadequate but also too late for appropriate activities. A survey of pharmacists revealed that overall 84.6% of respondents were in need of the drug shortage list. They expected it to be conducted to take proper measures for the drug shortage and to improve patient healthcare outcome and convenience. This study will contribute to improving public health by promoting stable supply of drugs and repairing the information delivery system.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
• /
• v.24 no.3 s.35
• /
• pp.400-413
• /
• 1991

The purpose of this paper is to identify factors affecting the optimum mix of required inputs and other relevant factors which account for the variation in physician's productivity in general hospitals, and to find out their implications for the efficient health planning and management. An extended version of Cobb-Douglas production function and cross sectional data of one day patient census from all general hospitals in Korea in 1988 were used in the analysis. Main results of the analysis and their implications could be summarized as follows : (1) The production function for physician's inpatient service shows the evidence of economies of scale, but the production function for physician's outpatient and adjusted-patient service, which combines both out- and in-patient service, shows that of dis-economies of scale. (2) The physician's role for production for all service is smaller than auxiliary personnel's, which imply that more intensive utilization of nurses, nursing aides and other auxiliary personnel is desirable for improving general hospital productivity (3) In case of physician's inpatient and adjusted-patient service, nurses' role is greater than nursing aides'. Therefore, more extensive utilization of nurses is recommended for the efficient operation of general hospitals. (4) The factor of hospital beds plays the leading role among required inputs in the production for physician's in- and adjusted-patient service. (5) The physician's productivity of general hospitals in rural area is lower than that in urban area. And the productivity of teaching hospitals is lower than that of the other hospitals. Further analysis was made in physician production function based upon the size of hospitals, namely those hospitals below 250 beds and those above. Explained variances by the factor of hospital beds was significantly increased in the case of those hospitals above 250. A more detailed and thorough investigation is needed for verifying factors influencing physician's productivity in general hospitals in Korea.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
• /
• v.21 no.8
• /
• pp.512-520
• /
• 2020

This study analyzed the relative operational efficiency and impact factors of regional public hospitals to present benchmarking points for enhancing the efficiency of inefficient regional public hospitals. The survey targets collected and utilized the internal resources and management performance data from 34 regional public hospitals in Korea over the past five years, from 2014 to 2018. The final 33 regional public hospitals were surveyed, excluding Jinan Regional Public Hospital, which opened in 2015, the middle of the survey period. The general characteristics and input/output variables were analyzed by frequency analysis and technical statistics analysis, and Data Envelopment Analysis was performed to measure the operational efficiency index and relative comparison. According to the study, there were 11 efficient hospitals (33.3%) and 22 inefficient hospitals (66.7%). Of the 22 inefficient hospitals, 13 (IRS: Increasing Returns to Scale) required scale expansion, and nine (DRS: Decreasing Returns to Scale) required scale reduction or rebalancing. The significance of this study was that an analysis of the relative efficiency and influencing factors presented specific alternatives or directions that could help enhance the efficiency of the growth of regional public hospitals, sustainable management, and expansion of publicness.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
• /
• v.18 no.1
• /
• pp.523-529
• /
• 2017

This study analyzed the financial information between 2011 and 2014 comparing management performance and utilization of capital and human resources between private non-profit general hospitals and regional public hospitals operated as general hospitals. The purpose of this study was to enhance the productivity for financial independence of regional public hospitals. Comparison analysis variables were value added to the total assets, value added to the productive activity tangible fixed assets, value added to personnel expenses, ratio of value added, and operating margin to revenues. According to the analysis results, regional public hospitals showed lower investment efficiency indicator and higher ratio of value added, as well as significantly lower operating margin-to-revenues compared with private non-profit general hospitals. Moreover, the effect of investment efficiency indicators on operating margin-to-revenues was value added to the productive activity of tangible fixed assets and value added to personnel expenses in regional public hospitals; the value added to personnel expenses in private non-profit general hospitals had a significant effect on the operating margin-to-revenues, the effect of value added to personnel expenses was the greatest. Therefore, it is necessary to asset utilization to the revenue and propriety of human resources to personnel expenses in regional public hospitals.