• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
• /
• v.55 no.5
• /
• pp.415-423
• /
• 2022

Economic evaluations in the healthcare are used to assess economic efficiency of pharmaceuticals and medical interventions such as diagnoses and medical procedures. This study introduces the main concepts of economic evaluation across its key steps: planning, outcome and cost calculation, modeling, cost-effectiveness results, uncertainty analysis, and decision-making. When planning an economic evaluation, we determine the study population, intervention, comparators, perspectives, time horizon, discount rates, and type of economic evaluation. In healthcare economic evaluations, outcomes include changes in mortality, the survival rate, life years, and quality-adjusted life years, while costs include medical, non-medical, and productivity costs. Model-based economic evaluations, including decision tree and Markov models, are mainly used to calculate the total costs and total effects. In cost-effectiveness or costutility analyses, cost-effectiveness is evaluated using the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio, which is the additional cost per one additional unit of effectiveness gained by an intervention compared with a comparator. All outcomes have uncertainties owing to limited evidence, diverse methodologies, and unexplained variation. Thus, researchers should review these uncertainties and confirm their robustness. We hope to contribute to the establishment and dissemination of economic evaluation methodologies that reflect Korean clinical and research environment and ultimately improve the rationality of healthcare policies.

• Environmental Analysis Health and Toxicology
• /
• v.30 no.sup
• /
• pp.6.1-6.4
• /
• 2015

Objectives This study is conducted to estimate the cost paid by the public suffering from disease possibly caused by chemical and to examine the effect on public health. Methods Cost-benefit analysis is an important factor in analysis and decision-making and is an important policy decision tool in many countries. Cost-of-illness (COI), a kind of scale-based analysis method, estimates the potential value lost as a result of illness as a monetary unit and calculates the cost in terms of direct, indirect and psychological costs. This study estimates direct medical costs, transportation fees for hospitalization and outpatient treatment, and nursing fees through a number of patients suffering from disease caused by chemicals in order to analyze COI, taking into account the cost of productivity loss as an indirect cost. Results The total yearly cost of the diseases studied in 2012 is calculated as 77 million Korean won (KRW) per person. The direct and indirect costs being 52 million KRW and 23 million KRW, respectively. Within the total cost of illness, mental and behavioral disability costs amounted to 16 million KRW, relevant blood immunological parameters costs were 7.4 million KRW, and disease of the nervous system costs were 6.7 million KRW. Conclusions This study reports on a survey conducted by experts regarding diseases possibly caused by chemicals and estimates the cost for the general public. The results can be used to formulate a basic report for a social-economic evaluation of the permitted use of chemicals and limits of usage.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
• /
• v.17 no.6
• /
• pp.3007-3013
• /
• 2016

Background: Gastrointestinal cancers are common malignancies associated with high mortality rates. Healthcare systems are always faced with high costs of treatment of gastrointestinal cancers including stomach cancer. Identification and prioritization of these costs can help determine economic burden and then improve of health planning by policy-makers. This study was performed in 2015 in Kerman City aimed at estimating the direct hospital costs for patients with gastric cancer. Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional study, the medical records of 160 patients with stomach cancer admitted from 2011 to 2014 to Shafa Hospital were examined, the current stage of the disease and the patients' health status were identified, and the direct costs related to the type of treatment in the public and private sectors were calculated. SPSS-19 was used for statistical analysis of the data. Results: Of the patients studied, 103 (65%) were men and 57 (35%) were women. The mean age of patients was 65 years. Distribution into four stages of the disease was 5%, 20%, 30%, and 45%, respectively. Direct costs in four stages of the disease were calculated as 2191.07, 2642.93, 2877, and 2674.07 USD (63,045,879, 76,047,934, 82,783,019, and 76,943,800 IRR), respectively. The highest percentage of costs was related to surgery in Stage I and to medication in Stages II, III, and IV. According to the results of direct costs of treatment for stomach cancer in Kerman, the mean total cost of treating a patient in the public sector was estimated at 74,705,158 IRR, of which averages of 60,141,384 IRR and 14,563,774 IRR were the shares of insurance and patients, respectively. Conclusions: The high prevalence and diagnosis of disease in old age and at advanced stages of disease impose great costs on the patients and the health system. Early diagnosis through screening and selecting an appropriate treatment method might largely ameliorate the economic burden of the disease.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
• /
• v.39 no.3
• /
• pp.183-191
• /
• 2013

We address the power generation mix problem that considers not only nuclear and fossil fuels such as oil, coal and LNG but also renewable energy technologies. Unlike nuclear or other generation technologies, the expansion plan of renewable energy is highly uncertain because of its dependency on the government policy and uncertainty associated with technology improvements. To address this issue, we conduct a delphi survey and forecast the capacity of renewable energy. We further propose a stochastic mixed integer programming model that determines an optimal capacity expansion and the amount of power generation using each generation technology. Using the proposed model, we test eight generation mix scenarios and particularly evaluate how much the expansion of renewable energy contributes to the total costs for power generation in Korea. The evaluation results show that the use of renewable energy incurs additional costs.

• The Journal of Fisheries Business Administration
• /
• v.39 no.1
• /
• pp.63-85
• /
• 2008

The objective of this study is to review the methodology of economic analysis of fishing ports by examining the economical feasibilities of a national fishing port (Jeongja Port) in Ulsan. This study utilized market value evaluation method to measure the benefits and costs related to the development of ports. The benefit variables are income effects resulting from the developments while the cost variables are sum of construction costs and maintenance costs. The income effects are measured in two ways: (1) income from individual project resulting from the developments, (2) the income effects by utilizing investment multipliers. The results shows that the BC ratio (Benefits/Costs) of Jeongja port by using (1) income from individual project resulting from the developments was 1.07 while the BC ratio by using (2) the income effects by utilizing investment multipliers was 1.10 due to a relative short period of useful life for investment multipliers. However, the income variable utilizing investment multipliers is more sensitive to the period of duration than the income variable from individual project.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers A
• /
• v.49 no.5
• /
• pp.199-204
• /
• 2000

This paper presents new approaches for the calculation for the calculation of each user's wheeling prices based on the economic analysis method with focus on the postage stamp rule. The suggested postage stamp rules can overcome the following problems embedded in the conventional accounting-costs-based methods such as the volatileness of wheeling prices depending deprieciation methods, emerging the wheeling free-riders due to the difference between accounting life-time and technical life-time, price discrimination between firm and non-firm network users, etc. To solve these problems we suggest new postage stamp rules employing capital recovery factor for investment costs treatment and applying technical life-time. Furthermore, we have suggested a new formulation for non-firm wheeling users based on the wheeling energies. In the case study, the results of suggested postage stamp methodologies are compared with those of conventional approaches.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.1 no.4
• /
• pp.448-454
• /
• 2006

As the power industry moves towards open competition, a need has arisen for appropriate methodology to evaluate power system reliability by using customer Interruption costs. This paper presents an assessment of the interruption costs by industrial customer type in Korea using customer survey methodology. When various research results are examined, the customer damage survey methodology becomes much more generalized. Especially, in the case of industrial customers, it is known that evaluation by the customer damage survey is more useful. Accordingly, this paper selected the customer damage survey method to evaluate the interruption costs by industrial customer type in Korea considering interruption and customer characteristics.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.9 no.3
• /
• pp.796-802
• /
• 2014

South Korea is recently under serious situation in supplying electricity with enough power reserve. A single fault of power plant at a peak-load time may lead to a total blackout for whole area connected by a single electric grid and isolated from other grids. Despite of the seriousness of blackout, however, there are scarce studies with ex-ante analysis of the economic costs from blackout. In order to evocate the seriousness, we calculate the economic costs for both industrial and household sectors with using some survey data and statistical methodologies. As a result, total economic costs are 39.23 trillion KRW (35.83 trillion KRW for industrial sector, 3.40 trillion KRW for household sector).

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.16 no.7
• /
• pp.279-290
• /
• 2016

This study was performed to evaluate the methodological quality of nursing costs analysis research based on the activity-based costing in Korea. Data were collected from database of Research Information Shraing Service, Korean studies Information Service System, DBpia and National Assembly Library. Eight studies were published on thesis and journal until Oct, 2015. Quality assessment tool was consisted in 5 factors based on activity-based costing. Studies of 87.5% were calculate the nursing units' costs in the hospital. All papers were appropriate in labor costs in resource factor and activity factor, but only 2 paper was appropriate in overhead cost allocation. Through this result, we found the necessity of improving accuracy in nursing costs analysis. These results can be helpful to manage cost and performance in nursing practice.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
• /
• v.28 no.5
• /
• pp.43-54
• /
• 2010

In order to improve the existing evaluation system of bus services and gain more reasonable analysis outputs, the authors evaluate the efficiency of 113 arterial bus routes in Seoul in 2009 using a modified BCC model considering not only desirable outputs but also undesirable outputs. Each Decision Making Unit (DMU) is assumed to use inputs such as possession costs, operating costs, the ratios of median bus stops overlapped route lengths to produce estimates of desirable outputs (the number of passengers and service satisfaction score) and undesirable outputs (CO2 emissions). According to the analysis, the modified BCC model considering both desirable outputs and undesirable outputs shows more appropriate results. DMUs would be more efficient on average to reduce nearly 10% of the 3 inputs (possession costs, operating costs, and overlapped route lengths) and increase by about 160% the ratios of median bus stops. Also, a Tobit regression analysis is conducted to identify the most effective variables for maximum efficiency and discover that the variable of possession costs and the ratios of median bus stops are statistically significant.