• Journal of Korean Library and Information Science Society
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.273-295
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• 2010

Germany has started restitution process for most of collections from its occupied countries after World War II which was strongly led by the United Nations. However, this process did not include many of the plundered Jewish collections. In 1989, restitution for the Jewish's properties confiscated by the Nazis became important international issue with success in Jewish material claims against Germany in the U.S and Europe countries after German unification. German libraries has still possessed collections sequestered by the Nazis from 1933 to 1945. With Washington conference on holocaust-era assets in 1998, libraries began to sympathize with restoration of their Jewish confiscated collections. In present, by identifying the provenance of those collections at primary level, German librarians focus on various restitution activities for those collections in order to introspect and overcome their past. Specifically, the libraries publish the practical guidebook of studies on the provenance identification and open the database for the pillaged collections to the public. Few libraries start to restore the collections, but the numbers of the restituted collections are still insignificant.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.147-152
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• 2008

Objectives : Fluoridation of drinking water is known to decrease dental caries, particularly in children. However, the effects of fluoridated water on bone over several decades are still in controversy. To assess the risk of hip fracture related to water fluoridation, we evaluated the hip fracture-related hospitalizations of the elderly between a fluoridated city and non-fluoridated cities in Korea. Methods : Cheongju as a fluoridated area and Chungju, Chuncheon, Suwon, Wonju as non-fluoridated areas were chosen for the study. We established a database of hip fracture hospitalization episode based on the claims data submitted to the Health Insurance Review Agency from January 1995 to December 2002. The hip fracture hospitalization episodes that satisfied the conditions were those that occurred in patients over 65 years old, the injuries had a hip fracture code (ICD-9 820, ICD-10 S72) and the patients were hospitalized for at least 7days. A total of 80,558 cases of hip fracture hospitalization episodes were analyzed. Results : The admission rates for hip fracture increased with the age of the men and women in both a fluoridated city and the non-fluoridated cities (p<0.01). The relative risk of hip fracture increased significantly both for men and women as their age increased. However, any difference in the hip fracture admission rates was not consistently observed between the fluoridated city and the non-fluoridated cities. Conclusions : We cannot conclude that fluoridation of drinking water increases the risk of hip fracture in the elderly.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.17-40
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• 2006

With the prospect of rapidly growing health insurance expenditures, particularly spending for ambulatory care, the introduction of a case-based payment method is discussed as an alternative to the current fee-for-service based method. A system to measure case mixes of providers is a core component of such payment systems. The objective of this study were to develop a classification system for ambulatory care, Korean Ambulatory Patient Group (KAPG) based on the U.S. APG version 2.0 and to evaluate the classification accuracy of the system. A database of 64,258,386 records was constructed from insurance claims submitted to the Health Insurance Review Agency (HIRA) during three months from August 2002. A total of 41,347,307 records with a single visit was used for the development and 7% random sample of the database was used for the evaluation. Additional groups were defined to include both physician and hospital fees in the classification, age splits were added to classify the entire population as well as the population older than 65, and the definition of medical groups used by the HIRA was adopted. The variance reduction in charges achieved by KAPGs was computed to evaluate the accuracy of classification. A total of 474 KAPGs was defined compare to 290 groups in the U.S. APG. The variance reduction for charges of all visits ranged from 20% to 37% depending on the type of provider, and ranged from 22% to 42% for non-outliers, that were better than those achieved by the system currently used by the .HIRA for its internal review purpose. Although further study is required to improve the classification for complicated care in larger hospitals, the results indicated that KAPGs could be used for better management of costs for ambulatory care.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.372-378
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• 2001

Objectives : This study introduced the healthy life-year(HeaLY), a composite indicator of disease burden, and used it to estimate the burden of major cancers in Korea. Methods : We collected data from the national death certificate database, the national health insurance claims database and the abridged life table. This data was used to create a spreadsheet and estimate the burden of major cancers by sex in terms of HeaLYs. Results : The burden of 10 major cancers for males was 2,248.97 person-year in terms of HeaLYs. Stomach cancer, liver cancer, and lung cancer were responsible for 75.2% of the burden of 10 major cancers. The disease burden of 10 major cancers for females was estimated to be 1,567.58 person-years. About two thirds of HeaLYs lost were from stomach cancer, liver cancer, lung cancer, colorectal cancer, and breast cancer. The rankings among 10 major cancers were somewhat different in terms of both HeaLYs and deaths as the HeaLY method considers both mortality and morbidity. Conclusions : Despite the limitations of the data sources, we conclude that HeaLY can aid in setting policy priorities concerning major cancers by estimating the disease burden of these cancers. Time-series analysis of the disease burden using HeaLY and DALY will elucidate the strengths and weaknesses of both methods.

• YAKHAK HOEJI
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• v.57 no.1
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• pp.63-69
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• 2013

The objectives of the study are to investigate pharmacy remuneration levels stratified by the number of prescriptions dispensing and the type of nearby medical facilities using the Korean National Health Insurance (NHI) database, and to classify community pharmacies based on the characteristics. Claims data of all community pharmacies were extracted from the Korean NHI database from January 1 to June 30, 2010. A total of 14,985 pharmacies were included for the analysis. The remuneration amounts per pharmacist were directly associated with the number of prescription dispensing, and varied by the type of nearby medical facilities where more than 90% of prescriptions dispensed at the pharmacy are issued from. We classified pharmacies to six groups according to the number of prescription dispensing and the type of nearby medical facilities; (1) pharmacies with equal to or less than 200 prescriptions per month per pharmacist, (2) pharmacies near a general hospital, (3) pharmacies near a regular hospital, (4) pharmacies near a clinic, (5) pharmacies near multi clinics, and (6) pharmacies that do not belong to the above types. Compared to pharmacies near a clinic or multi clinics, pharmacies near a general hospital showed a lower number of prescription dispensing per pharmacist, but the income from dispensing fees was higher (p<0.05). The new taxonomy of community pharmacies can be a useful basis for further policy development in pharmacy remuneration system.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.190-198
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• 2009

Objectives : The objective of this study is to estimate the economic costs of cancer on society. Methods : We estimated the economic burden of people with cancer in South Korea. To perform the analysis, we reviewed the records of people who were cancer patients and those who were newly diagnosed with cancer. The data was compiled from the National Health Insurance Corporation, which included the insurance claims database, a list of cancer patients, a database that records the cancer rates, the Korea Central Cancer Registry Center s cancer patient registry database and the Korea National Statistical Office s causes of death database. We classified the costs as related to cancer into direct costs and indirect costs, and we estimated each cost. Direct costs included both medical and non-medical care expenses and the indirect costs consisted of morbidity, mortality and the caregiver's time costs. Results : The total economic costs of cancer in South Korea stood at 14.1 trillion won in 2005. The largest amount of the cost 7.4 trillion won, was the mortality costs. Following this were the morbidity costs (3.2 trillion won), the medical care costs (2.2 trillion won), the non-medical care costs (1.1 trillion won) and the costs related to the caregiver's time (100 billion won). As a result, the economic cost of cancer to South Korea is estimated to be between 11.6 trillion won to 14.1 trillion won for the year 2005. Conclusions : We need to reduce the cancer burden through encouraging people to undergo early screening for cancer and curing it in the early stage of cancer, as well as implementing policies to actively prevent cancer.

• Therapeutic Science for Rehabilitation
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.51-63
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• 2023

Objective : This study aimed to analyze the association between lifestyle and medical expenses of older adults with mental illness using claims data. Methods : We conducted secondary data analysis using the older adult cohort database provided by the Korea National Health Insurance Service. The lifestyle and medical expense variables were extracted from the cohort database. We used a generalized linear model to examine the association between lifestyle and medical expenses. Results : In total, 32,853 records were extracted. The results showed that smokers had medical expenses (estimate = -218,255, p = .037). As the number of days of walking increased, medical expenses significantly decreased (estimate = -58,843, p < .0001). Furthermore, as the number of days of drinking decreased, medical expenses increased (estimate = 692,289, p < .0001). Conclusion : This study analyzed the estimates of medical expenses according to lifestyle among older adults with mental illness. Smoking and exercise were negatively associated with medical expenses. These results suggest the importance of a healthy lifestyle for older adults with mental illness. In addition, this study can be used as clinical evidence for lifestyle management programs to improve physical and mental health.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.121-147
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• 2004

Since the pilot program for a DRG-based prospective payment system was introduced in 1997, the performance of KDRGs has been one of hotly debated issues. The objectives of this study are to refine the classification algorithm of the KDRGs and to assess the improvement achieved by the refinement. The U.S. Medicare DRGs version 17.0 and the Australian Refined DRGs version 4.1 were reviewed to identify areas of possible impro-vement. Refined changes in the classification and result of date analyses were submitted to a panel of 48 physicians for their reviews and suggestions. The refinement was evaluated by the variance reduction in resource utilization achieved by the KDRG The database of 2,182,168 claims submitted to the Health Insurance Review Agency during 2002 was used for evaluation. As the result of the refinement, three new MDCs were introduced and the number of ADEGs increased from 332 to 674. Various age splits and two to four levels of severity classification for secondary diagnoses were introduced as well. A total of 1,817 groups were defined in the refined KDRGs. The variance reduction for charges of all patients increased from 48.2％ to 53.6％ by the refinement, and from 65.6％ to 73.1％ for non-outlier patients. The r-square for length of stays of all patients was increased from 28.3％ to 32.6％, and from 40.4％ to 44.9％ for non-outlier patients. These results indicated a significant improvement in the classification accuracy of the KDRG system.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.85-94
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• 2009

This paper investigates the intonation patterns of Korean spontaneous speech through an analysis of four dialogues in the domain of travel planning. The speech corpus, which is a subset of spontaneous speech database recorded and distributed by ETRI, is labeled in APs and IPs based on K-ToBI system using Momel, an intonation stylization algorithm. It was found that unlike in English, a significant number of APs and IPs include hesitation lengthening, which is known to be a disfluency phenomenon due to speech planning. This paper also claims that the hesitation lengthening is different from the IP-final lengthening and that it should be categorized as a new category, as it greatly affects the intonation patterns of the language. Except for the fact that 19.09% of APs show hesitation lengthening, the spontaneous speech shows the same AP patterns as in read speech with higher frequency of falling patterns such as LHL in comparison with read speech which show more LH and LHLH patterns. The IP boundary tones of spontaneous speech, showing the same five patterns such as L%, HL%, LHL%, H%, LH% as in read speech, show higher frequency of rising patterns (H% and LH%) and contour tones (HL%, LH%, LHL%) while read speech on the contrary shows higher frequency of falling patterns and simple tones at the end of IPs.

• Journal of Medicine and Life Science
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.90-95
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• 2019

The Korea Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention interpreted that recent outbreaks of scarlet fever in Korea since 2011 was resulted from the expansion of scarlet fever notification criteria. To suggest a relevant hypothesis regarding this emerging outbreak, a time series analysis(TSA) of scarlet fever incidence between 2002 and 2016 was conducted. The raw data was the nationwide insurance claims database administered by the Korean National Health Insurance Service. The inclusion criteria were children aged ≤14 years residing in Jeju Province, Korea who received any form of healthcare for scarlet fever from 2002 to 2016. The season was defined as winter (December, January, February; Q1), spring (March, April, May; Q2), summer (June, July, August; Q3), and autumn (September, October, November; Q4). There were seasonal variations with showing peak season on Q1 and Q3. And three phases as 2002 Q2~2005 Q2, 2005 Q2~2009 Q4, and 2010 Q1~2016 Q4 were found between 2002 and 2016. The results from TSA suggested that the recent outbreak of scarlet fever among children in Jeju Province might be a phenomenon from 'unknown birth-related environmental factors' changed after 2010.