• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.27 no.3 s.47
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• pp.609-626
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• 1994

This study was conducted to investigate whether variations in hospital services utilization across small geographic areas in Korea existed, and if so, what factors are responsible for the variation. The claims data of the fiscal year 1992 obtained from the regional health insurance societies were used for the study. Main findings of the research can be summarized as follows: 1 Extremal Quotients (EQ) of hospital expenditure per capita and hospital days per capita were 2.69 and 2.73, and Coefficient of Variation (CV) were 0.14, both, respectively. The EQ and the CV of admission rate were also 2.71, 0.15. The EQ and the CV of expenditure per admission were 1.73, 0.10 and those of hospital days per admission were 1.29, 0.06. All these statistics were statistically significant and this result provides strong evidence for the existence of small area variations. 2. Comparing patterns of variation among areas, the area which showed higher utilization amounts is Chansungp'o. Koje area, whereas the areas which showed lower utilization amounts are Yongju, Changhung, Miryang, Mokp'o, Koch'ang area. 3. Multivariate analytic methods were used to examine factors related to the variation across areas. In terms of the health resource availability variables, beds per capita or physicians per capita were positively associated with all utilization indices. As for the health service market structure variables, the proportion of health care institutions operating for less than f years was positively related to the expenditure per capita, hospital days per capita and expenditure per admission. In addition the proportion of the private health care institutions also had a negative relationship with total utilization amount and admission rate and the proportion of physicians under age 40 was negatively associated with expenditure per capita and expenditure per admission. With regard to the socio-demographic characteristics, proportion of medicaid population was positively related to hospital days per capita, and percentage of paved road was positively related to hospital days per admission. As a conclusion, wide variations existed across small areas in Korea and supply factors were found to be important in explaining the variation.

• Journal of Bio-Environment Control
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.1-13
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• 1992

This study was attemped to provide some fundamental data for the safety structural design of biological production facility. Wind speed and snow depth according to recurrence intervals for design load estimation were calculated by frequency analysis using the weather data of 60 stations in Korea. The following results were obtained : 1. Type-I extremal distribution was selected for the probability density function of yearly maximum wind speed and snow depth and result of Chi-square goodness of fit showed highly significance at most regions. 2. Design frequency factors for given number of samples and recurrence intervals were calculated, and also design wind speed and snow depth as shown in Table 5-Table 6 and Fig.3-Fig.4 were derived. 3. About 46.4% of the winds having maximum wind speed at every station was analyzed to be same direction, and the consideration of this fact may improve the structural safety. 4. Considering wind speed and snow depth, protected cultivation is very difficult in Ullungdo and the Youngdong districts, and strong structural design is needed in the Chungnam and Junbuk west seaside against snow depth and the west-south seaside against wind speed in Korea.