• Health Policy and Management
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.107-114
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• 2016

Background: Over the last few decades, because hospitals in South Korea also have undergone dramatic changes, Korean hospitals traditionally have provided specialized health care services in the health care market. Inner Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (IHI) measures hospital caseloads based on patient proportions, independent of patient volumes. However, IHI that rely solely on patient proportions might be problematic for larger hospitals that provide a high number of diagnosis categories, as the patient proportions in each category are naturally relatively smaller in such hospitals. Therefore, recently developed novel measure, category medical specialization (CMS) is based on patient volumes as well as patient proportions. Methods: We examine the distribution of hospital specialization score by hospital size and investigate association between each hospital specialization and length of stay per case and hospital cost per case using Korean National Health Insurance Service-cohort sample data from 2002 to 2013. Results: Our results show that IHI show a decreasing trend according to the number of beds and hospital type but CMS show an increasing trend according to the number of beds and hospital type. Further, inpatients admitted at hospitals with higher IHI and CMS had a shorter length of stay per case (IHI: B=-0.104, p<0.0001; CMS: B=-0.044, p=0.001) and inpatients admitted at hospitals with higher IHI and CMS had a shorter hospital cost per case (IHI: B=-0.110, p=0.002; CMS: B=-0.118, p=<0.0001). Conclusion: This study may help hospital policymakers and hospital administrators to understand the effects of hospital specialization strategy on hospital performance under recent changes in the Korean health care environment.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.241-250
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• 2003

Rock mass is very inhomogeneous in nature and data obtained by site investigations and tests are very limited. For this reason, many uncertainties are to be included in the process of constructing structures in rock mass. In the design of a tunnel, support pattern, advance rate, and excavation method, which are important design parameters, must be determined to be optimal. However, it is not easy to determine those parameters. Moreover if those parameters are determined incorrectly, unexpected risk occurs such as decrease in the stability of a tunnel or economic loss due to the excessive supports etc. In this study, how to determine an optimal support pattern and advance rate, which are the important tunnel design parameters, is introduced based on a risk analysis. It can be confirmed quantitatively that the more supported a tunnel is, the larger reliability index becomes and the more stable the tunnel becomes. Also an optimal support pattern and advance rate can be determined quantitatively by performing a risk analysis considering construction cost and the cost of loss which can be occurred due to the collapse of a tunnel.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.563-572
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• 2017

Ordinary reinforced concrete (RC) and prestressed concrete bridges are two popular and typical types of short- and medium-span bridges that accounts for the vast majority of all existing bridges. The cost of maintaining, repairing or replacing degraded existing RC bridges is immense. Detecting the abnormality of RC bridges at an early stage and taking the protective measures in advance are effective ways to improve maintenance practices and reduce the maintenance cost. This study proposes a systematic method from influence line (IL) identification to damage detection with applications to RC bridges. An IL identification method which integrates the cubic B-spline function with Tikhonov regularization is first proposed based on the vehicle information and the corresponding moving vehicle induced bridge response time history. Subsequently, IL change is defined as a damage index for bridge damage detection, and information fusion technique that synthesizes ILs of multiple locations/sensors is used to improve the efficiency and accuracy of damage localization. Finally, the feasibility of the proposed systematic method is verified through experimental tests on a three-span continuous RC beam. The comparison suggests that the identified ILs can well match with the baseline ILs, and it demonstrates that the proposed IL identification method has a high accuracy and a great potential in engineering applications. Results in this case indicate that deflection ILs are superior than strain ILs for damage detection of RC beams, and the performance of damage localization can be significantly improved with the information fusion of multiple ILs.

• Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.21 no.8
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• pp.29.1-29.8
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• 2018

This study was conducted to evaluate the use of tuna by-product meal (TBM) as a substitute for fishmeal in juvenile Korean rockfish (Sebastes schlegeli) diets. Five isonitrogenous (52% crude protein) and isocaloric (4.9 kcal/g) diets were prepared. Control diet (Con) was formulated to contain brown fishmeal, whereas 25, 50, 75, and 100% of fishmeal was substituted with the same percentage of TBM in the TBM25, TBM50, TBM75, and TBM100 diets, respectively. Three replicate groups of fish (initial weight, $29.5{\pm}0.6g$) were fed one of the five diets for 12 weeks. The mean weight gain of fish fed the Con and TBM25 diets was significantly higher than that of fish fed the TBM100 diet (P < 0.05), but it was not significantly different from the weight gain of fish fed the TBM50 and TBM75 diets. The feed efficiency and protein efficiency ratios of fish fed the Con diet were significantly higher than those of fish fed the TBM100 diet (P < 0.05), but were not significantly different from those fed the TBM25, TBM50, and TBM75 diets. The TBM25, TBM50, TBM75, and TBM100 diets had significantly (P < 0.05) lower incidence cost and higher profit index than the Con diet. These results suggest that the tuna by-product meal used in this study could replace up to 75% of fishmeal protein in the diet without reducing growth and feed utilization in juvenile Korean rockfish weighing 29-53 g. By considering feed cost, the TBM 75 diet is recommendable for Korean rockfish farming.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.247-255
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• 2017

Background: South Korea has experienced problems with excessive pharmaceutical expenditures. In 2010, the South Korean government introduced an outpatient prescription incentive program to effectively manage pharmaceutical expenditures. Therefore, we examined the relationship between the outpatient prescription incentive program and pharmaceutical expenditures. Methods: We used data from the Korean National Health Insurance claims database, which included medical claims filed for 22,732 clinics from 2011-2014 to evaluate associated pharmaceutical expenditures. We performed multiple regression analysis and Poisson regression analysis using generalized estimating equation models to examine the associations between outpatient prescription incentives and the outcome variables. Results: The data used in this study consisted of 123,392 cases from 22,372 clinics (average 5.4 periods follow-up). Clinics that had received outpatient prescription incentives in the last period had better cost saving and Outpatient Prescribing Costliness Index (OPCI) (received: proportion of cost saving, ${\beta}=6.8179$; p-value < 0.0001; OPCI, ${\beta}=-0.0227$; p-value < 0.0001; reference = non-received). Moreover, these clinics had higher risk in the provision of outpatient prescription incentive (relative risk, 2.772; 95% confidence interval, 2.720 to 2.824). The associations were higher in clinics that had separate prescribing and dispensing programs, or had professional staff. Conclusion: The introduction of an outpatient prescription incentive program for clinics effectively managed problems with rapid increases of pharmaceutical expenditures in South Korea. However, the pharmaceutical expenditures still increased in spite of the positive impact of the outpatient prescription incentive program. Therefore, healthcare professionals and health policy makers should develop more effective alternatives (i.e., for clinics without separate prescribing and dispensing programs) based on our results.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.7-18
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• 2005

Over the past twenty years, the maintenance system has been developed and its importance has been increased. For the effective maintenance of the urban transit, we have developed the maintenance system based on the concept of RCM(Reliability Centered Maintenance). RCM analysis is a systematic approach to developing a cost-effective maintenance strategy based on the various components's reliability of the system in question. It is performed according to process that includes the following steps; definition of function and functional failures of the systems, construction of RB D(Reliability Block Diagram), performance of FMEA(Failure Modes & Effects Analysis) and calculation of the reliability index. The final process of RCM is to determine appropriate failure maintenance strategies. This paper aims to define the procedure of maintenace based on the concept of RCM for urban transit. The key for a successful maintenance system is an automated scheduling to the maximum extent possible and timely executions. The developed system issues maintenance plan and repair request based on analyzed data and maintenance experience.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.13 no.2 s.29
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• pp.141-146
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• 2007

In this study, we have investigated several input factors and output factors to maintain safety management of domestic shipping companies, and then have analyzed the efficiency of performance about each shipping companies' safety management system from 1998 year to 2004 year using DEA method. The result of analysis shows that the annual mean efficiency index of total companies tended downward every year. Analysis was that the cause was increase of the cost of repairing ship, the cost of ship's stores and idle day of ship while the number of marine accidents and sanctions of PSC, ship's insurances and P&I insurances was decreased.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.181-189
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• 2017

The purpose of this research is to set a standard for deciding competitive marketing prices of new supplying apartment houses and to analyze decision factors in sale price of supplying apartment houses with Analytic Hierarchy Process; the resulted model does not use the method that joins the land cost and the cost of construction together, but the method that compares the sales prices of surrounding apartments. This research tries to set a standard for decision of the prices of newly supplying apartment houses by classifying the determinants into the $1^{st}$ step(4 factors), the $2^{nd}$ step(9 factors), and the $3^{rd}$ step(25 factors). According to the process, the relative importance of decision factors in the sale prices is determined and this should be used as the index of sale prices for newly supplying apartment houses when the houses are provided. In addition, through the $2^{nd}$ step including 9 factors, the comparative model for sale prices is defined and the model is presented to be applied in the real business. Subsequent study additionally considering the factors apart from marketing which tries to find a generalized standard needs to be conducted.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.63-68
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• 2003

This paper is to measure the sensitivity of relations in communication network operation. In order to procure an important adequacy in the network operation and quality improvement, it is necessary to increase network operation efficiency and analyze the characteristic of network operation. Finally, we analyze costing appropriate operation, propose profit increase scheme and apply realistic business. First of all it's important to improve and estimate a proper operating cost thoroughly and comprehensively. Because the important issue of this process is quality process and this quality process occurs customers' satisfaction, therefore, to make a mutual relation in-between individual change of each element is to analyze a reasonable standard. So, for this reason we study on structuring nice moods for network operation and estimating many scenarios for measuring efficiency. Especially those in economic and sensitivity based. It will be the development of analyzing methods which suites the service and communication system. The result of this study gives a basis for making a flexible and highly predictable system by pre configured sensitivity analysis of each scenarios.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.33-40
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• 2016

In this study, using the Cost Prediction Model and Performance Prediction Model have developed a way to estimate future management costs and performance for bridge and tunnel by Network Level. Studies to date have primarily focused on the single facility, it is difficult to apply to the analysis of the Network Level. This study, items used as an index of 'Special Act for the Safety Control of Public Structures' was added to Usability and Functionality to Status. Action period and annual budget for each facility can be estimated through the Basic and Advanced analysis. In addition, we verified the technical feasibility through case analysis.