• Health Policy and Management
• /
• v.28 no.3
• /
• pp.257-262
• /
• 2018

This study reviews the advent of long-term care (LTC) hospitals and its key issues in Korea. For analysis, enforcement ordinances and enforcement rules related to LTC hospitals were reviewed. Official statistic data were used for quantitative analysis and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development data were utilized for comparative analysis. Various references and expert interviews were conducted for status analysis. As of 2016, the number of LTC hospitals was 1,386 and the number of beds were 246,373. It showed the trend of increasing medical care costs and the cost of care at LTC hospitals increasing from 998.8 billion Korean won in 2008 to 4,745.6 billion Korean won in 2016, accounting for 7.3% of the total National Health Insurance expenditure. From the societal perspective, several issues were pointed out within the current health care system related to LTC hospitals: establishment of roles, concerns about the increase in medical expenses, and the quality of medical personnel.

• 대한예방의학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2000.10a
• /
• pp.189-192
• /
• 2000

• International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
• /
• v.10 no.4
• /
• pp.19-27
• /
• 2022

The purpose of this study is to investigate the incidence rate, surgery tendency, and risk factors of cataracts among the elderly in Korea. The subjects were 40-95 years old men and women using the National Health Services' surgical statistics. Among the 33 major surgeries, which increased by 1.1% per year for the last 20years (1.6 million), the most operated surgery in 2020 was cataract surgery (454,000), the number of which was 858.8 per 100,000 people. Among the surgical patients, cataract patients (7.9% increased) was the third largest among the top (2016-2020) constantly with annually 2.2% increasing for 20 years (19.95 million). The medical expenses of major surgeries (excluding non-benefit) increased by an average rate of 9.3% per year over the 20 years (7,204 billion won) out of a total medical expenses of 7.2 trillion won, and the cataract surgery (813.2 billion won) was the second largest among the medical expenses in 2020 (top 3). This study showed that there was a high correlation between cataract and smoking, low income, and low-educated, whereas being no concentration of cataract patient in tertiary hospitals.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
• /
• v.48 no.2
• /
• pp.123-129
• /
• 2022

Background: The Environmental Health Action Program was a national project carried out from 2012~2021. It was aimed at developing public technologies to protect people's health from various environmental hazards. Objectives: One of the final goals of the project was "creating health benefits worth more than 179.2 billion won by reducing the environmental burden of disease." This study aims to evaluate whether the program sufficiently achieved the planned benefits. Methods: In order to secure consistency in evaluation, we applied the same equation used in the goal-setting process. It is comprised of six parameters to estimate the benefit: 1. The amount of medical expenses for environmental diseases; 2. The attributable proportion of environmental risk factors' 3. The rate of reduction in medical expenses for environmental diseases; 4. R&D project contribution; 5. The proportion of successful policy reflection; and 6. The contributions of the project. The corresponding variables were estimated at the end of the project, and the health benefits of the project were recalculated using the newly estimated variables. Results: It was estimated that a total of 195 billion won in health benefits occurred or will occur from 2015 to 2026. The main contributors for achieving the target were an increase in medical expenses for environmental diseases, a high score in the R&D project contribution, and the proportion of successful policy reflection. Conclusions: Technically, the equation used in the project is about medical expenses for environmental diseases rather than about the environmental burden of disease. There are several benefits of using the environmental burden of disease in the evaluation of public health policies. In further studies, developing a policy evaluation framework using indicators such as population attributable fraction would be needed.

• Journal of Korean Medicine Rehabilitation
• /
• v.23 no.3
• /
• pp.159-175
• /
• 2013

Objectives Herniated Intervertebral Disc of C-spine is one of the most common diseases that causes posterior neck pain. This study was designed to analyze the general distribution and hospital cost by day and case of Korean medical treatment for Cervical Herniated Intervertebral Disc (HIVD). Methods The 132 impatients for treatment of HIVD were analyzed according to the distribution of sex, age, the duration of HIVD, the contributory factors, the Clinical grade at admission, the clinical findings at admission, the duration of hospitalization, the clinical grade at admission and the hospital cost per day and case. Results 1) The total hospital cost per case averaged 1,985,600 Won, which was consisted of room charge 584,044 Won (29.41%), performance fee 511,463 Won (25.76%), herbal medication 381,517 Won (19.21%), Korean medical physiotherapy 296,310 Won (14.92%), food expenses 199,997 Won (10.07%) in order. 2) The total hospital cost per day averaged 137,285 Won, which was consisted of room charge 39,036 Won (28.43%), performance fee 33,594 Won (24.47%), herbal medication 30,642 Won (22.32%), food expenses 12,870 Won (9.37%), and the average duration of hospitalization was 15.1 days. 3) There was statistically significant difference in the consultation fee, room charge, and herbal medication on the part of sex. 4) There was statistically significant difference not only in the performance and consultation on the part of duration of hospitalization but also the in the duration of average duration of hospitalization. 5) There was statistically significant difference in the Korean medical physiotherapy and herbal medication on the part of clinical findings. 6) There was statistically significant difference in the Korean medical physiotherapy and herbal medication on the part of duration of HIVD. 7) There was statistically significant difference in the Korean medical physiotherapy and herbal medication on the part of clinical outcome. 8) There was not only statistically significant difference in the performance, but also in the herbal medication on the part of clinical grade at admission. Conclusions This study provides plenty of information to design out the specific terms of Korean medical expenses of Cervical HIVD inpatients hospitalized at Korean medicine hospital.

• Journal of Korea Entertainment Industry Association
• /
• v.14 no.6
• /
• pp.201-208
• /
• 2020

The purpose of this study was to analyze the claim data of Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service to determine what factors affected the length of stay in patients aged 65 and older and undergoing total knee arthroplasty due to the principal diagnosis of gonarthrosis by the type of medical institutions. As a result of making an analysis, gender, age, medical security type, severity, residential area and the number of sickbeds were identified as the factors that influenced the length of stay in each type of medical institutions. At this point in time when an increase in the elderly population triggered by population aging and another subsequent increase in medical expenses put a heavy strain on household and national economy, it's necessary to consider how to shorten the length of stay and how to ensure the efficient management of sickbeds based on the findings of this study. In addition, this study is of significance in that it could be used as basic data on quality life-care for elderly patients by the introduction of a systematic management system geared toward lessening patient burden for medical expenses.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
• /
• v.17 no.8
• /
• pp.407-414
• /
• 2016

This study was conducted to provide basic data to evaluate the appropriateness of convalescent hospitalization treatment by investigating the number of hospitalization days and the total treatment expenses of a total of 44,037 monthly billing statements requested from the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service. Evaluated data consisted of medical care expenses of patients of the diem payment system hospitalized at convalescent hospitals in Daejeon, Chungnam, Chungbuk and Sejong from January through December of 2014. According to the analysis result of the general characteristics of the study objects and the canonical correlation analysis of the top 15 main diagnosis names, 7 canonical functions have been deducted. Among them, six canonical functions were shown to be statistically significant (p<0.001), and canonical function 1 had a chi-squared value of 5955.49 and 98 degrees of freedom at p<0.001 level. Overall, the results indicated that if health and welfare service in the regional society is magnified, social hospitalization can be reduced.

• Health Policy and Management
• /
• v.14 no.3
• /
• pp.20-44
• /
• 2004

The National Health Insurance Expenditure has been increased rapidly since the introduction of the separation of prescription and dispensing in 2000, and this trend of rapid growth in overall spendings rate has been observed predominantly among medical practitioners. This study was conducted to investigate the growth rate and distributional changes in private medical practitioners' expenses from 1999 to 2002 and its determinants using the National Health Insurance claims data. The total increasing rate of all medical practitioners' expenditure paid by the National Health Insurance between 1999 and 2002 was $41.71\%$, which exceeding that of general hospitals by $20\%$p. But the income distribution among each practitioner was improved as the changes in Gini coefficient(from 0.40 to 0.38) and decile distribution ratio(from 0.25 to 0.29) during the same period showed. However, this improvement in distributional patterns is not enough since even in 2002 it turned out that the highest $10\%$ income group earned 33times more than the lowest $10\%$ income group did. Also, higher Gini coefficient was observed in larger cities and some department like plastic surgery, obstetrics and gynecology. The major causes of this differentials in medical practitioners' expenses were factors related to medical demand like proportion of old population, residential economic status in a given area. In addition, providers' economic incentives also played an important role in determining their income distribution. The large income differentials among physicians may imply a skewed distribution of patients and thus long waiting time, inefficient utilization of resources and potential inadequate quality of care. In this sense, unreasonable distributional gaps should be reduced, so effective measures as well as ongoing monitoring would be necessary to correct current distributional problems.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
• /
• v.15 no.12
• /
• pp.625-633
• /
• 2017

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of private insurance revenues and household spending on household income inequality. To this end, we conducted a concentration index and concentration curve analysis for the income level of medical panel survey data in 2015. The main results are as follows. First, the household income concentration ratio is 0.3580, which means that income is concentrated in the high income group, and the degree of inequality is considerably large. Second, although the portion of the private insurance benefits was small on the high-income household, it helped to strengthen the benefits concentration on this group. Third, the low income group has a large self-pay medical expense. Finally, the index of the income excluding the burden of the total medical expenses in the household income was 0.3676, so that even accounting for medical expenses, the income was concentrated in the high income class. Therefore, private insurance benefits and medical expenses were all contributing factors to the inequality of household income, and this study provides the essential materials for research and policy planning which could lead to the convergence of different fields.

• Journal of Society of Preventive Korean Medicine
• /
• v.11 no.1
• /
• pp.139-151
• /
• 2007

This paper evaluated the benefits of the National Health Insurance(NHI) and suggested the necessity of extending some oriental medical services into the benefits schedule in the NHI. Comparing the rate of public financing in national health expenditure in OECD countries and measuring out-of-pocket payments in total medical cost showed the level of insurance payments to total medical cost is approximately $50%{\sim}60%$ in Korea, which is quite insufficient to pay household medical expenses, although the NHI covers the whole population. A few of consumers' priority surveys for medical needs suggested herb medicine, muscle treatment, and manufactured herb medicine be included in the list of the NHI benefits, based on efficiency and equity criteria. It was estimated that the NHI can afford to cover these three items of oriental medical services.