• Transactions of the KSME C: Technology and Education
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.193-198
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• 2013

The horseback riding simulator, an exercise training machine providing a simplified horse riding motion has been developed for aiming at healthcare. The purpose of this study was to estimate the energy expenditure without measuring bio-signals using the simulator. The test protocol was consisted of increase up to maximal intensity(Motion 9) and decrease down to minimal intensity(Motion 4) during 25 minutes, and energy expenditure was measured by portable cardiopulmonary exercise testing analyzer. There were significant differences in energy expenditure according to each riding motion. The result will be able to estimate energy expenditure using motion level, exercise time, age and gender during the riding.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.363-369
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• 2023

The term "catastrophic health expenditure" means assessing the extent to which medical costs cause financial hardship for households. The aim of this research is to analyze the percentage of households that faced severe financial strain due to medical expenses from 2006 to 2021. This was achieved by utilizing data obtained from the National Survey of Tax and Benefit (NaSTaB), Korea Health Panel (KHP), and Households Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES). A trend analysis was conducted to examine the percentage of households that experienced catastrophic healthcare expenses. The households that experienced the catastrophic health expenditure was 2.49% in 2021 using the NaSTaB data. The trend analysis yielded a statistically significant result, indicating a decreasing trend (annual percent change [APC], -4.79; p<0.0001) in the proportion of households facing catastrophic health expenditures. Also, the results of the 2019 KHP and the 2021 HIES showed 1.09% and 2.44% for the households that experienced catastrophic health expenditure. The trend was increased according to the KHP (APC, 0.55; p=0.0004) and the HIES (APC, 7.04; p<0.0001). As a result, this study proposes that sustained attention and further interventions are necessary to ease the economic pressure caused by catastrophic health expenses, particularly for low-income households.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.379-381
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• 2019

Korea's healthcare is in great danger of sustainability. In 2020, the baby boomer will begin to be older, and there is no promise that the total fertility rate of 1.0 or less will rebound, and Korea's economic growth rate is predicted to be less than 2%. Together with these phenomena, Plan for Benefit Expansion in Nation Health Insurance (Moon Jae-in Care) will seriously threaten the sustainability of health insurance finance. In addition, health care in Korea has many problems: excessive medical utilization, rapidly increasing elderly medical costs, concentrating patients into big hospitals, low healthcare personnel but many healthcare facilities and equipment, bad quality of primary and mental care, and fast-growing health expenditure. For sustainability, healthcare of Korea should be reformed. The direction of the reform is people-centered and integrated healthcare in the community which is composed of empowering and engaging people, strengthening governance and accountability, reorienting the model of care, coordinating services, and creating an enabling environment.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.56-70
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• 2014

Background: Korea shows rapid population aging and increase in healthcare service use and expenditure. Also, this would be accelerated because of the baby boomers who will be 65 years old and more in 2020. Chronic disease is another reason that increases the use of healthcare service and expenditure of the middle- and old-aged households. Catastrophic health expenditure (CHE) is the index which can indicate the households' burden of health spending. Despite the importance, there are few studies on CHE of middle- and old-aged households and especially no panel study yet. This is the reason that this study is carried out. Methods: This study used 3-year data from the Korea Welfare Panel Study conducted from 2009 to 2011. We defined CHE if a household's health expenditure is equal or greater than the threshold value if income remaining after subsistence needs has been met. We used 4 different threshold values which are 10%, 20%, 30%, and 40%. In order to look at the households which experienced CHE, we conducted panel logit analysis after correspondence analysis and conditional transition probability analysis. Results: This study showed three notable results. First, there has been a difference among age groups, which implies that the older people are, the more easily they can experience CHE. Second, the households with no private insurance are shown to have a higher CHE occurrence rate. Lastly, there has been a significant difference among the kinds of chronic diseases. The households which have cancer, cerebrovascular disease, and heart disease have a higher CHE occurrence rate. However, the households with diabetes have no significant effects to CHE occurrence. Also, hypertension has a negative effect to the occurrence. Conclusion: With the results, it can be implied that elderly people with chronic disease are more needed in medical coverage and healthcare. Also, private insurance can play its role in protecting households from CHE. Therefore, it needs to conduct studies on CHE especially about different age groups, private insurance, and chronic disease.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.50 no.2
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• pp.91-99
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• 2017

Objectives: As in many low-income and middle-income countries, out-of-pocket (OOP) payments by patients or their families are a key healthcare financing mechanism in Bangladesh that leads to economic burdens for households. The objective of this study was to identify whether and to what extent socioeconomic, demographic, and behavioral factors of the population had an impact on OOP expenditures in Bangladesh. Methods: A total of 12 400 patients who had paid to receive any type of healthcare services within the previous 30 days were analyzed from the Bangladesh Household Income and Expenditure Survey data, 2010. We employed regression analysis for identify factors influencing OOP health expenditures using the ordinary least square method. Results: The mean total OOP healthcare expenditures was US dollar (USD) 27.66; while, the cost of medicines (USD 16.98) was the highest cost driver (61% of total OOP healthcare expenditure). In addition, this study identified age, sex, marital status, place of residence, and family wealth as significant factors associated with higher OOP healthcare expenditures. In contrary, unemployment and not receiving financial social benefits were inversely associated with OOP expenditures. Conclusions: The findings of this study can help decision-makers by clarifying the determinants of OOP, discussing the mechanisms driving these determinants, and there by underscoring the need to develop policy options for building stronger financial protection mechanisms. The government should consider devoting more resources to providing free or subsidized care. In parallel with government action, the development of other prudential and sustainable risk-pooling mechanisms may help attract enthusiastic subscribers to community-based health insurance schemes.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.303-313
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• 2013

During last 65 years, Korea has achieved very rapid economic growth and social reformation including healthcare system. Many foreigners have praised that Korea healthcare system is very good in the respect of ease accessibility to healthcare under the lowest cost among the industrialized countries. Whole population are covered by the National Health Insurance. Also utilizations of healthcare among different income classes are even. However Korea healthcare system faced with several challenges, in terms of the an aging population and a rise in chronic disease problem, new threats of communicable disease due to globalization, the rapid increase of healthcare expenditure and high financial burden of patients even though they are insured. To cope with these challenges, we need reconsider the healthcare system as followings; to set up ideology of healthcare as normative public goods, to rebuild paradigm of healthcare for 21 century, to reform public health for strengthening health promotion, to develop new method for healthcare management including quality improvement and consumer responsiveness, to build new governance for health and to view new perspective on healthcare as a kind of industry.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.59-65
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• 2013

Background: The purpose of this study was to analyze the related factors which decide the percentage of health care expenditure of the total fiscal expenditure of local governments and to provide the basic data to contribute for the efficient allotment of healthcare budget. Methods: This study was conducted by the percentage of health care expenditure for 3 years by classifying a total of 230 local governments into the metropolitan cities (gu, 69), the counties (si, 75), and the boroughs (gun, 86) all over the country. With the collected data, the general characteristics of independent variables and the dependent variable were analysed using SPSS ver. 18.0, The correlation analysis and multivariate regression analysis were conducted for the characteristics of variables according to regions by year. Results: In correlation between health care expenditure by year and other variables, there was a significant positive correlation with unemployment rate, metropolitan cities (gu) and other regions, the percentage of health center personnel, health care expenditure in last year as a independent factors. On the other hand there was no correlation with social assistance recipients and the percentage of aging population, financial self-reliance, industrialization rate, suicide rate, cardiac disease mortality, cerebrovascular mortality on health care expenditure. Conclusion: The study clearly shows that health care expenditure of local governance was not correlated with health care need factors comparing social welfare expenditure.

• The Korean Journal of Health Service Management
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.89-99
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• 2018

Objectives : To compare the degree of achievement of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) among 39 developing countries in Africa and to investigate the correlation between health care financing and the UHC index. Methods : For data, 14 UHC indexes were used in 2015 supplied by the World Health Organization (WHO). In addition, this study used a 10% of threshold point corresponding to the catastrophic health expenditures and a 25% of threshold points as a health care financing index. Results : It was found that there were significant difference among Least Low Developed Countries (LLDCs), Other Low Income Countries (Other LICs), Lower Middle Income Countiies (LMICs), Upper Middle Income Countires (UMICs) to compare the average value by nation on the UHC index. This study showed that the UHC index of LLDCs was lowest, but the average value was higher as it moved towards LMICs and UMICs. In addition, it was found that there was an average value difference among the groups like LLDCs, Other LICs, LMICs and UMICs. As a result of comparison, it was found that the spending of household health expenditure increased as LLDCs moved towards UMICs when the burden of household health expenditure was 25%. Conclusions : This study aimed to compare the UHC indexes of African nations and to investigate the correlation between the degree of spending of total expenditure on health and burden of household health expenditure and UHC, and its effect.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.8
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• pp.705-714
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• 2020

This study aims to investigate the main factors that affected the government health expenditures in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), United Arab Emirates (UAE), Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait), during the period from 2005 to 2019. The study employs a panel data technique in order to monitor the pooled determinant variables of healthcare expenditures in these countries. The study's results indicate, by using FMOLS approach for panel data, that the average healthcare expenditures per capita in GCC countries have a positive and a significant relationship with the government revenues, the size of the population, and the governments' public debt. The positive and the significant relationships of governments' public debt may be explained even if the governments of the GCC countries suffer from a budget deficit; the GCC countries continue to increase the healthcare expenditure. The study suggests that the policymakers of the GCC countries must take into consideration those variables when they develop their healthcare policies. Also, the GCC countries urgently need to have high levels of foreign exchange reserves to maintain the expected level of spending on the healthcare sector, because their public revenues depend mainly on the oil revenues, which are fluctuating continuously.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.470-478
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• 2020

In this paper, a theoretical model that separates one single conversion factor into two conversion factors for both outpatients and inpatients is introduced. By using hypothetical numbers, two conversion factors and an adjustment factor were calculated. The major implications are as follows. Firstly, by introducing two conversion factors, a minimum incentive mechanism for admitting outpatients to a clinic and high risk inpatients to a hospital was installed. Secondly, the introduction of two conversion factors decreased the drive to admit outpatients to a hospital by reducing the economic benefits for the hospital. Thirdly, it is possible to make explicit contracts for several factors rather than a single conversion factor, so that it can be used as an appropriate management tool for rapidly increasing medical expenses. Finally, this research can be used to set up policy tools to establish a proper healthcare delivery system in Korea by inducing behavioral changes in healthcare institutions.