• Journal of Korean society of Dental Hygiene
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.409-419
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• 2019

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to analyze the factors affecting antibiotic prescription in dental outpatients. Methods: The present study was conducted using data from the National Health Insurance Service - National Sample Cohort. We analyzed prescriptions issued in the dental outpatient department in 2015, for adults over 19 years of age. Antibiotic prescription rates and mean prescription days were analyzed by sex, age, insurance type, presence of diabetes mellitus and hypertension, season in treatment, type of dental institution, and location of dental institution. Multivariate logistic regression was also performed to analyze the factors affecting antibiotic prescription in dental outpatients. Results: A total of 257,038 prescriptions were analyzed. The mean prescription days of antibiotics in dental outpatients were $3.04{\pm}1.08days$, and the prescription rate was 93.0%. Two variables (presence of diabetes mellitus and insurance type) were excluded from the multivariate logistic regression analysis model because they did not significantly affect antibiotic prescription. The possibility of antibiotic prescription was higher in men ${\geq}61years$ of age and those with hypertension. Furthermore, antibiotics were most frequently prescribed in dental clinics rather than dental hospitals, and more frequently in Busan compared to other areas (p<0.001). Conclusions: Several factors were determined to affect antibiotic prescription, and detailed guidelines for consistent antibiotic prescription are needed.

• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.75-86
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• 2002

This study was conducted to investigate the changes in patients and medical services before and after the Separation of Prescription and Dispensing in Health Center. For the purpose of this study, prescription data of 5,890 prescribed patients in March 2000(before the Separation of Prescription and Dispensing) and 3,496 prescribed patients in March 2001(after the Separation) in 4 Health Centers located in Gyeongsangbuk-do and Gyeongsangnam-do were collected. For investigation of the change of character of prescribed patients and the disease, sex, age, chief diagnosis, the hind of medical insurance, days of visit, days of prescription were investigated by using National Health Insurance claim data. And for investigation of change of prescription, prescribed drugs per each claim, the use rate of antibiotics, injection, and high-price antiphlogistic drug were investigated for acute respiratory disease and musculoskeletal disease. The major results were as follows: For the changes of prescribed patients of each disease, patients with acute respiratory disease were decreased by 49.7% after the Separation of Prescription and Dispensing than before the Separation of Prescription and Dispensing and patients with hypertension(18.1%), patients with musculoskeletal disease(70.5%), patients with diabetes(8.5%), patients with digestive organ disease(71.2%), patients with chronic respiratory disease(76.4%) were decreased. But patients with urethritis were increased by 66.7%. The mean Health Center visited days of prescribed patients decreased significantly after the Separation of Prescription and Dispensing than before in both male and female(p<0.01) and in health insurance patients(p<0.01). For the each of the disease, hypertension, diabetes, musculoskeletal disease decreased. The mean prescribed days increased after the Separation of Prescription and Dispensing than before(p<0.01). According to the kine of disease, the mean prescribed days increased after the Separation of Prescription and Dispensing than before in all the diseases except the urethritis(p<0.01). For acute respiratory diseases, number of prescribed drugs per each claim decreased significantly after the Separation of Prescription and Dispensing(4.7 drugs) than before(4.9 drugs) and the prescription rate of injection decreased significantly from 63.8% to 7.70%, and the prescription rate of antibiotics decreased significantly from 337% to 19.1%(p<0.01). For musculoskeletal diseases before and after Separation of Prescription and Dispensing, number of prescribed drugs per each claim decreased significantly from 3.7 to 3.2 and the prescription rate of injection decreased significantly from 64.9% to 1.7%, and the prescription rate of high-price antiphlogistic drugs increased significantly from 29.1% to 397%(p<0.01). In consideration of above findings, the mean visited days decreased and on the contrary, the mean prescribed days per each prescription increased after Separation of Prescription and Dispensing than before in health centers. For the prescription pattern of physicians, number of prescribed drugs and the prescription rates of injection and antibiotics per each claim decreased, but the prescription rate of high-price antiphlogistic drugs increased after Separation of Prescription and Dispensing.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.145-150
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• 2010

In order to investigate the antibiotic prescription pattern for upper respiratory infections (URI), the prescription sheets for outpatients from July 2008 to June 2009 were collected from 7 community pharmacies in Ulsan City, and the prescription pattern of Pediatric and ENT physicians was analyzed. The antibiotic prescription rates of Pediatric and ENT physicians were 63.8% and 61.7%, respectively. It was also observed that the oral antibiotic prescription was 95.6% in Pediatrics and 97.6% in ENT. The most favorable antibiotics by Pediatric physicians were penicillins (21.5%) penicillin-clavulanate (36.4%) and cephalosporins (16.5%), macrolides (11.6%), quinolones (3.5%), and nifuroxazide (3.5%). In case of ENT, the commonly prescribed antibiotics were also penicillin-clavulanate (47.6%), cephalosporins (31.6%), macrolides (11.9%) and sulfonamide (1.3%). The antibiotic combination rate was 7.6% in Peditrics and 1.9% in ENT, among antibiotic prescriptions. The combination of more than two oral antibiotics was examined as 66.8% in Pediatrics and 44.2% in ENT. The common oral antibiotic combination in Pediatrics was prescriptions of two ${\beta}$-lactam antibiotics (54.3%). Among them 83% was the combination of amoxicillin-clavulanate (7:1) and amoxicillin, which could be judged as antibiotic overuse. The next highly prescribed oral antibiotic combination was ${\beta}$-lactam/macrolide antibiotic combination probably for URI (11.3%) and ${\beta}$-lactam/nifuroxazide combination (10.0%) presumably for acute diarrhea. Comparatively the oral antibiotic combination prescribed by ENT physicians was negligible except one physician. In conclusion, the antibiotic over-prescription rate by antibiotic combination was much higher in Pediatrics than ENT, even though both clinical departments showed nealy the similar antibiotic prescription rates.

• The Korean Journal of Health Service Management
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.37-49
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• 2017

Objectives : This study analyzes the characteristics of prescription drugs for acute upper respiratory tract infection in outpatient clinics and provides basis for establishing the correct evaluation project on appropriate prescribing indicators. Methods : Research data were collected from two for each family medicine, internal medicine, pediatric, otorhinolaryngology and general practitioner clinics with a total of 10 clinics with diseases classifications codes J00-J06, J20 on patients receiving treatment between January 1, 2013 and December 31, 2013 every Monday in Busan City. Results : The antibiotic prescription rate in evaluating the project on appropriate prescribing indicators of Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service was 44.3%, whereas this study was approximately 30% higher because analysis to target the entire cold-related diagnosis. Conclusions : The correct antibiotic prescription by expanding the current assessment standard should be identified as a minor diagnosis because the evaluation project on appropriate prescribing indicators targets the major diagnosis only.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.19 no.10
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• pp.2423-2428
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• 2015

We have implemented a personal prescription management system which enables resource-limited mobile device to utilize the optical character recognition technique. The system enables us to automatically detect and recognize the text in the personal prescription by using a optical character recognition technique. We improved the recognition rate over a pre-processing in order to improve the character recognition rate of the original method. The examples such as a personal prescription management service, alarm service, and drug information service with mobile devices have been demonstrated by using the our system.

• The Korean Journal of Health Service Management
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.121-132
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• 2019

Objectives: This study analyzed the prescription antibiotics characteristics of Acute respiratory infection outpatients. It provides a basis for establishing the correct evaluation project on appropriate prescribing indicators. Methods: The research data were collected from the National Health Insurance Corporation's 2014 sample cohort for Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, Otorhinolaryngology, Family Medicine and General practitioner clinics classification of diseases codes J00-J06, J20-J22, J40 outpatients. Results: The antibiotic prescription rate on the evaluation project for appropriate prescribing indicators of Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service was 43.54%, whereas in this study it was about 10% higher because the analysis targeted the entire acute respiratory infection diagnosis. Conclusions: There is a need to identify the correct antibiotic prescription by expanding the current assessment standard. Such standard must include acute lower respiratory infections and minor diagnosis because current evaluation projects on appropriate prescribing indicators targets only the major diagnosis of acute upper respiratory infection.

• Anxiety and mood
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.143-148
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• 2015

Objective : This study examined benzodiazepine prescription patterns of outpatients visiting the psychiatry department in a single general hospital in Korea. Methods : A retrospective descriptive analysis of benzodiazepine prescriptions was performed on a database from 2014 in a general hospital in Korea. We analyzed the following factors of adult outpatients: demographic factors such as sex and age, amount of benzodiazepine prescribed, treatment duration, and diagnosis based on the ICD-10. Results : In 2014, benzodiazepines were prescribed to 46.4% of the outpatients. Percentage of benzodiazepine prescription increased with age and was highest in the age group 40-59 years. Prescription was more prevalent in women and the prescription percentage increased by treatment duration. Patients with the F4 diagnosis (neurotic, stress-related and somatoform disorders) were the most highly prescribed group. For all diagnosis groups, prescription was more prevalent in females or similar for both sexes except for patients with F5 diagnosis (behavioral syndromes associated with physiological disturbances and physical factors), with males being more predominant. Conclusion : Despite the concern regarding the rate of benzodiazepine prescription and administration to geriatric patients, long-term prescription and usage among older patients is still prevalent.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.129-155
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• 2008

The rate of antibiotics prescription for an acute airway infection significantly varies depending upon the diagnosis type, specialty, and the location of the hospital along with many other related factors. The objective of this study is to empirically investigate the possible relationship between the antibiotics prescription rates for an acute airway infection and the degree of competition in the hospital market regions of mainly the providers of primary medical care services such as clinics, internal medicines, pediatrics and otorhinolaryngology department. Using the data from Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRA) regarding the hospitals' antibiotics prescription rates for the acute airway infection and controlling for selected variables of demand and supply sectors, this study tries to figure out that the degree of competition in the hospital market, regardless of what type of competition indexes we employed, has a statistically significant effect on the variations of antibiotics prescription rate of the clinics in local areas. This result implies that as an economic consideration itself, the change in the degree of competition in the hospital market can play a crucial role influencing the treatment behaviors of the medical doctors. More specifically, this study reveals that as the degree of competition increases the antibiotics prescription rate goes up. This result means that if the market becomes more competitive in a specific region so that it might cause a reduction in doctor's income, doctors with rational decision-making process, recognize that the benefit created from inducing patients' seemingly unnecessary demand for medical care (income effect) would be higher than the costs associated with sustaining their targeted income (substitution effect). It is because that the doctors are more likely to prescribe antibiotics which create relatively higher margins than other medical care services in order to sustain their targeted income when the hospital market competition becomes tighter. Even though this study empirically confirms that antibiotics prescription can be affected by the economic incentives, it still raises following issues as limitations of the study: first issue is about the representativeness of the hospital regions segregated for this study, which might be weak in explaining whether these regions are mutually exclusive in reality. Patients actually consider the quality of services, transportation cost, time costs, and any other related factors choosing the doctors or hospitals, and in that sense, this study rules out 'border-crossing' in using the medical care services. Second issue arises in capturing the data of antibiotics prescription rate. Since we use the average rate for each medical institution, we cannot figure out the average rate for each patient so that we are not able to control for the variation of patients' medical conditions. It is because of the unavailability of data regarding each patient's medical condition from HIRA. Thirdly, since this study mainly analyzes the medical institutions providing primary care such as clinics, internal medicines, pediatrics, and otorhinolaryngology department, it is skeptical of whether those institutions can represent the hospital market in respective regions and truly reflect the degree of competition. It needs to extend the study areas and disease types as well as any micro data for future studies.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.151-159
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• 2018

This study analyzes the impact of competitions clinics on the total treatment cost and anti-biotics prescription rate. The result of implementing the basic statistics, correlations, and regression analysis by facilitating the evaluation data by Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service in 2015 for acute otitis media in children is shown as follows. First, there is a significant difference for each si-gun-gu for the competition index between total treatment cost and clinics, but there is almost no significant difference for the anti-biotics prescription rate. Second, competition in clinics has statistically important impact on the total examination cost And, third, competition in clinics has no statistically important impact on the anti-biotics prescription rate. There is a need for additional studies on re-examination rate, treatment cost per visit and so forth in order to clarify other factors of competition for medical institutions impacting on the physician behavior in the future studies.

• YAKHAK HOEJI
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• v.47 no.4
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• pp.244-251
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• 2003

Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease of the airway and the prevalence rate is increasing. As the burden of asthma to the society is significant due to the increasing hospital admissions and emergency visits, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI, USA) and World Health Organization (WHO) have developed comprehensive guidelines to help clinicians and patients make appropriate decisions about asthma care. The aim of study was to analyze the pattern of asthma prescriptions based on the national asthma guidelines for the patients visiting primary health care providers. Prescription data for asthma were obtained from the Korean National Health Insurance claims database of January 2002. Ten percent of the primary health care providers were sampled based on their specialty areas, and 20％ of the claim cases were randomly chosen. Study results showed that prescription rate for oral beta-2 agonists was 44.3％, and that for oral theophylline was 46.9％. Oral steroids were prescribed for the 28.2％ of the claims. Utilization of inhalers was low for both bronchodilators (20.3％, beta-2 agonists inhalers), and steroids (8.4％ steroids inhalers). Bronchodilators were more preferred to the longterm anti-inflammatory controllers among the primary health care providers. Prescription rate for antibiotics was 46.0％ for asthmatic patients. Also gastrointestinal drugs were prescribed for 59.0％, antitussives 65.3％, antihistamines 25.3％ and analgesics 29.4％, respectively. This study presented that the prescribing pattern of the primary health care providers for the asthma was quite different from the national and international guidelines. More efforts need to be made to reduce the gap between the present pattern of asthma prescription and the guidelines.