• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.43 no.5
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• pp.431-437
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• 2017

Objectives: To protect the health and safety of residents during chemical accidents, the governmental authorities need to provide personal protective equipment (PPE) to citizens who desire it. This study aims to investigate residents'awareness of PPE and perform an economic analysis on providing PPE to residents near chemical plants prior to the establishment of a related law. Methods: This study was carried out through a questionnaire completed by 600 residents composed of items such as residents'awareness of PPE, what type of PPE they need, and how to purchase PPE. Economic analysis (cost-benefit analysis) was conducted on providing PPE to residents near chemical plants on basis of the Gumi City hydrogen fluoride accident of 2012. Results: The results of the questionnaire showed that most residents recognized the need for PPE preparedness for chemical accidents, in particular, for respirators. The level of expense that respondents were prepared to shoulder to share the burden was $25. Except for chemicals of hazard level 2, the benefit of all kinds of chemical accident preparedness considerably exceeded costs in the cost-benefit analysis on providing PPE. An estimated government budget of $20 million per year would be required to provide PPE (hood-type mask) for all residents within a one-kilometer radius of chemical plants in Korea, but only $5.8 million when residents share the expenses. Conclusion: The results of this study suggest that programs for providing PPE for residents near chemical plants should be established by law.

• Korean Journal of Occupational Health Nursing
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• v.4
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• pp.5-29
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• 1995

Occupational health services in Korea have been operated as dual types : one is operated by occupational health care manager and the other is health care agency without their own personnel. The performance of occupational health service should be different due to the variety of characteristics of health care manager and workplace, qualification of health care manager. This study is to analyze performance of occupational health care services with a particular consideration of job performance shape and efficiency, based on comparing those two types of health care management to show on the basic data for the settlement of more qualitative health care management system at workplace. For this study, total 391 places in Seoul and Inchon city area ; 154 places (39.4%) managed by designated health care manager and 237 places (60.6%) by the agency with their commission are selected as research samples. Tools for data collection are questionnares that have been investigated during the period of 20 September 1993-20 December 1993. Those data are compared with percentiles, mean, standard deviation and B/C ratio using SPSS PC program. Conclusions observed from the tests and each comparison could be summerized as follows : 1. Occupational health care have been accomplished at workplaces with designated people than with agencies people, and coverage rate of the occupational health care services has differences, due to management types. The reason of these results is due to visit only one or two times monthly by the agencies, while their own health care manager obsess, at the workplaces all the times. 2. Most of the expense for environmental control of all health care services expenditures shows that there is almost no fundamental improvement because more expenses are needed for procuring personal protective equipment and measuring work environment instead of environmental improvement. 3. It is investigated how much the cost of occupational health care services needs per worker, and calculated how much the cost needs per service hour per worker. The results from this show that the cost of occupational health services at workplaces with their own managers used less than the cost of health care agencies, eventually the former gives better services with less cost than the latter. 4. Benefit/Cost ratio is also produced by total benefit/total cost. The result from the above way reads 4.57 as a whole, while their own manager having workplaces reads 4.82 and the agencies do l.56. Even if their own manager performing workplaces spent more cost, this system produces more benefit than the agencies management. 5. The B/C ratio for medical organization such as local clinic, health care center and pharmacy shows more than or equal to at the workplaces controlled by the agencies. It is inferred that benefit would be much less than the cost used, with so being inefficient. 6. It is assumed that the efficiency ratio of health education is equal to reduction rate of workers medical organization visit. Estimated reduction rate 5%, 10%, 15%, show that the efficiency ratio of health education have an effect on producing benefits. It is estimated that more benefit can be produced if more qualitative education will be provided for enhancing health care efficiency. 7. Results of this study cannot be generalized because there are large scale of deviation in case of workplaces with less than 300 full time workers, but B/C ratio reads 2.69 as a whole and 3.25 at workplaces with their own health care manager are higher than 1.63 at the workplaces manged by the agencies. Finally, all the benefit concerning health care services could not be quantified, measured and shown on the value of money. This is a reason that a considerable part of benefits are so underestimated. This is also thought that measurement tools should be developed for measuring benefits of health care services with a comprehensive quantification. in the future. It is also expected that efficiency of occupational health care services should be investigated using cost-effectiveness analysis.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.45-55
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• 2015

While the influence of healthcare accreditation system to the quality improvement of hospitals has more increased, regarding the preparation costs for healthcare accreditation, it has never been empirically studied about the costs that are actually invested by hospitals. This study is going to determine the difficulties in the preparation process of accreditation and details of accreditation preparation costs for hospitals that participated in the healthcare accreditation system and acquired accreditation. The survey was performed in a self-reported form from February 28 to March 21 2014 for 189 acute hospitals accredited as a hospital from 2011 to February 2014. Of all questionaries of survey participants, 98 were recovered; the response rate was 51.9%. A total of 40 questionnaires were used except for 58 containing insincere answers. Main findings are followings: Firstly, findings showed that advanced general hospitals spent the most statistically significantly highest in terms of equipments and total costs among cost items for accreditation preparation. When accreditation preparation costs items were classified according to classification of hospitals, advanced general hospitals spent the most statistically significantly highest in the equipments and total costs. Also in terms of regional, Gyeonggi, Incheon regions were found to spend statistically significantly higher costs in the equipments costs. Secondly, as a result of the survey in the distribution of the total accreditation preparation costs, advanced general hospitals have disbursed the most out of all. However, the result in hospitals does not show significant difference to the expense of advanced general hospitals and that especially other regional hospitals spent higher costs. As such, all hospitals are under a heavy burden of higher costs on accreditation preparation, especially hospitals. The build-up of infrastructures by hospitals through an accreditation system consequently led to a higher initial investment; if the accreditation system is effective in improving the quality of health care and patient safety, appropriate responses are needed. In other words, financial support for investment costs needs to be given to allow hospitals to actively participate in the accreditation system.