• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.5-9
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• 1976

The categories of national health problems may be mainly divided into health promotion, problems of diseases, and population-economic problems which are indirectly related to health. Of them, the problems of diseases will be exclusively dealt with this speech. Rurality and Disease Problems There are many differences between rural and urban areas. In general, indicators of rurality are small size of towns, dispersion of the population, remoteness from urban centers, inadequacy of public transportation, poor communication, inadequate sanitation, poor housing, poverty, little education lack of health personnels and facilities, and in-accessibility to health services. The influence of such conditions creates, directly or indirectly, many problems of diseases in the rural areas. Those art the occurrence of preventable diseases, deterioration and prolongation of illness due to loss of chance to get early treatment, decreased or prolonged labour force loss, unnecessary death, doubling of medical cost, and economic loss. Some Considerations of Innovative Approach The followings art some considerations of innovative approaches to the problems of diseases in the rural Korea. 1. It would be essential goal of the innovative approaches that the damage and economic loss due to diseases will be maintained to minimum level by minimizing the absolute amount of the diseases, and by moderating the fee for medical cares. The goal of the minimization of the disease amount may be achieved by preventive services and early treatment, and the goal of moderating the medical fee may be achieved by lowering the prime cost and by adjusting the medical fees to reasonable level. 2. Community health service or community medicine will be adopted as a innovative means to disease problems. In this case, a community is defined as an unit area where supply and utilization of primary service activities can be accomplished within a day. The essential nature o the community health service should be such activities as health promotion, preventive measures, medical care, and rehabilitation performing efficiently through the organized efforts of the residents in a community. Each service activity should cover all members of the residents in a community in its plan and performance. The cooperation of the community peoples in one of the essential elements for success of the service program, The motivations of their cooperative mood may be activated through several ways: when the participation of the residents in service program of especially the direct participation of organized cooperation of the area leaders art achieved through a means of health education: when the residents get actual experience of having received the benefit of good quality services; and when the health personnels being armed with an idealism that they art working in the areas to help health problems of the residents, maintain good human relationships with them. For the success of a community health service program, a personnel who is in charge of leadership and has an able, a sincere and a steady characters seems to be required in a community. The government should lead and support the community health service programs of the nation under the basis of results appeared in the demonstrative programs so as to be carried out the programs efficiently. Moss of the health problems may be treated properly in the community levels through suitable community health service programs but there might be some problems which art beyond their abilities to be dealt with. To solve such problems each community health service program should be under the referral systems which are connected with health centers, hospitals, and so forth. 3. An approach should be intensively groped to have a physician in each community. The shortage of physicians in rural areas is world-wide problem and so is the Korean situation. In the past the government has initiated a system of area-limited physician, coercion, and a small scale of scholarship program with unsatisfactory results. But there might be ways of achieving the goal by intervice, broadened, and continuous approaches. There will be several ways of approach to motivate the physicians to be settled in a rural community. They are, for examples, to expos the students to the community health service programs during training, to be run community health service programs by every health or medical schools and other main medical facilities, communication activities and advertisement, desire of community peoples to invite a physician, scholarship program, payment of satisfactory level, fulfilment of military obligation in case of a future draft, economic growth and development of rural communities, sufficiency of health and medical facilities, provision of proper medical care system, coercion, and so forth. And, hopefully, more useful reference data on the motivations may be available when a survey be conducted to the physicians who are presently engaging in the rural community levels. 4. In communities where the availability of a physician is difficult, a trial to use physician extenders, under certain conditions, may be considered. The reason is that it would be beneficial for the health of the residents to give them the remedies of primary medical care through the extenders rather than to leave their medical problems out of management. The followings are the conditions to be considered when the physician extenders are used: their positions will be prescribed as a temporary one instead of permanent one so as to allow easy replacement of the position with a physician applicant; the extender will be under periodic direction and supervision of a physician, and also referral channel will be provided: legal constraints will be placed upon the extenders primary care practice, and the physician extenders will used only under the public medical care system. 5. For the balanced health care delivery, a greater investment to the rural areas is needed to compensate weak points of a rurality. The characteristics of a rurality has been already mentioned. The objective of balanced service for rural communities to level up that of urban areas will be hard to achieve without greater efforts and supports. For example, rural communities need mobile powers more than urban areas, communication network is extremely necessary at health delivery facilities in rural areas as well as the need of urban areas, health and medical facilities in rural areas should be provided more substantially than those of urban areas to minimize, in a sense, the amount of patient consultation and request of laboratory specimens through referral system of which procedures are more troublesome in rural areas, and more intensive control measures against communicable diseases are needed in rural areas where greater numbers of cases are occurred under the poor sanitary conditions.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.47-69
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• 1990

The measures taken to reform the Dutch health insurance system hold valuable lessons for countries such as Korea, where there has been increased concern regarding the efficiency and effectiveness of the health services provided. The growing literature on comparative health insurance policies suggests that nations can learn from each other. In addition, Korean policymakers have shown great interest in the health insurance systems of foreign countries, particularly in Japan. The development of Korea's health insurance scheme during the past 12 years has made a significant contribution to the increased accessibility of health care services. Although the insurance coverage is universal, the health insurance system today in Korea is by no means a product of systematic and planned efforts. Moreover, it lacks due considerations of insured's needs as well as the long-term objectives of the social security health care system. There are growing gaps in premium burdens and benefits between the rural health insurance program and the employee's health insurance programs. Furthermore, the regional health insurance program is experiencing financial difficulties in spite of the fact that the amount of the government subsidy has been sharply increased in recent years. Under the present payment method solely based on the fee-for-service schedule, both consumers and providers are encouraged to utilize and prescribe more services. The combination of the utilization-inducing reimbursement system and continuous pushes for expanding health insurance has played a crucial role in raising the country's medical bills. Current trends in Korea's health care sector and those anticipated in the near future necessitate changes in the structure and funding of health care. As indicated in the above, there are various shortcomings in this context, the health policy authority in Korea can draw valuable lessons from the Dutch experiences in reforming their health insurance system. The main elements of the Dutch reform measures are a restructuring of the insurance system and a greater role for market forces in the health care system. On this basis a new system will be created which reflects the social nature of health care while at the same time containing sufficient mechanisms to allow the health care sector to operate in a cost-effective and efficient manner.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.59-89
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• 2010

One of the key words that represent the culture and social phenomena in this 21st century is 'Digital Convergence'. Presently our society is going through the second evolving phase of the convergence, integration between industries. Integration between industries refers to the phenomenon of integrating various industrial areas such as broadcasting, communication, finance, automobile, and medical treatment as the range of IT utilization becomes extended. The telecommunication-broadcasting bundling is a typical example of integration between industries. This study analyzed the effect of the service features of the bundling on the customer's acceptance intention by applying the innovative technology product acceptance model, TAM, in the process of accepting the telecommunication-broadcasting bundling. This study suggests three independent variables, the 'low cost(discount)', 'service integrity', and 'selectability', which affect perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and perceived risk, and figures out the actual influence as follows. In conclusion, these results suggest that in order to accept and spread the telecommunication-broadcasting bundling, it is necessary to establish (1) the cost discounting strategy realize (price strategy), (2) the fee noticing system, payment system, call-service system, and systemic integration including installation and A/S system integration, and develop (service strategy), (3) the bundling or related options that can provide users with selectability (product strategy).

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.201-209
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• 2020

In this study, issues related to changes in base year, which have controversial effects on fees in service contracts, were reviewed. In this regard, sensitivity analysis was conducted on the effects of changes in base year on conversion factor by type. The benefits and disadvantages of each specific type of medical institution were examined. Main conclusions are as follows. First, changing the base year to be closer to the present time had a beneficial effect on the conversion factor of hospitals. Second, changing the base year to be closer to the current point of time had an adverse effect on the conversion factor of pharmacies and clinics and had a significant adverse effect on clinics. Third, assuming that a single conversion factor is collectively applied to all types, a favorable effect occurred in all cases when the base year was changed to be closer to the present time. Base year changes can bring about conflicts of interest between insurer and providers, and within providers. Therefore, changing the base year should be pursued upon mutual agreement on a reasonable basis for resource allocation. In addition, it is necessary to provide incentives for temporary compensation for the types of losses incurred.