• Health Policy and Management
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.131-151
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• 1992

The contents of prescription service were comparatively analysed between health centers(HC) and private clinics(PC). Medical chart review was done for 330 otu-patients diagnosed with upper respiratory tract infection(UR) of 120 adults and 90 children, and gastritis or duodenitis of 120 adults. Emphasis on comparison was the prime cost of medication which used in prescription service. The results were as follows; 1. The prime costs fro the medication per visit of HC group were significantly higher than PC group in all three diseases, and the out of pocket payments of patients per visit were significantly lower in the HC group than PC group. 2. The reason for high prime costs of medication per visit of HC in adult case of URI were due to the idverse use of medication and long prescription period per visit. And high medication costs in children cases of URI in HC group were due to the longer prescription day. In cases of gastritis, the prime cost of medication was also higher because of longer prescription period and the higher prime cost of medication. The proportions of medications for injection in the HC and PC groups showed similar features. 3. In depth analysis of the prescription services showed the differences of the contents of medication. In adults cases of URI, the averaged cost of oral medication was significantly lower in HC group, but that of medication for injection was higher in HC group. In children cases of URI, the averaged cost of oral medication and medication for injection was lower in HC group than in PC group. But in the cases of gastritis it was was higher in HC group than in PC group. The prescription periods were longer in HC group than in PC group in all three diseases. As a conclusion prime medication cost and quality of prescription services of HC group were higher than PC group. In terms of health care the cost containment and quality assurance in physician visit for common disease, public sector utilization is good option for those perspectives. But it should not be generalized unless future study about structure and outcome research for quality assurance.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.57 no.3
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• pp.298-303
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• 2024

Objectives: The aim of this study was to estimate drug prescription indicators in outpatient services provided at Iran Social Security Organization (SSO) healthcare facilities. Methods: Data on all prescribed drugs for outpatient visits from 2017 to 2018 were extracted from the SSO database. The data were categorized into 4 main subgroups: patient characteristics, provider characteristics, service characteristics, and type of healthcare facility. Logistic regression models were used to detect risk factors for inappropriate drug prescriptions. SPSS and IBM Modeler software were utilized for data analysis. Results: In 2017, approximately 150 981 752 drug items were issued to outpatients referred to SSO healthcare facilities in Iran. The average number of drug items per outpatient prescription was estimated at 3.33. The proportion of prescriptions that included an injection was 17.5%, and the rate of prescriptions that included an antibiotic was 37.5%. Factors such as patient sex and age, provider specialty, type of facility, and time of outpatient visit were associated with the risk of inappropriate prescriptions. Conclusions: In this study, all drug prescription criteria exceeded the recommended limits set by the World Health Organization. To improve the current prescription patterns throughout the country, it would be beneficial to provide providers with monthly and annual reports and to consider implementing some prescription policies for physicians.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.247-255
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• 2017

Background: South Korea has experienced problems with excessive pharmaceutical expenditures. In 2010, the South Korean government introduced an outpatient prescription incentive program to effectively manage pharmaceutical expenditures. Therefore, we examined the relationship between the outpatient prescription incentive program and pharmaceutical expenditures. Methods: We used data from the Korean National Health Insurance claims database, which included medical claims filed for 22,732 clinics from 2011-2014 to evaluate associated pharmaceutical expenditures. We performed multiple regression analysis and Poisson regression analysis using generalized estimating equation models to examine the associations between outpatient prescription incentives and the outcome variables. Results: The data used in this study consisted of 123,392 cases from 22,372 clinics (average 5.4 periods follow-up). Clinics that had received outpatient prescription incentives in the last period had better cost saving and Outpatient Prescribing Costliness Index (OPCI) (received: proportion of cost saving, ${\beta}=6.8179$; p-value < 0.0001; OPCI, ${\beta}=-0.0227$; p-value < 0.0001; reference = non-received). Moreover, these clinics had higher risk in the provision of outpatient prescription incentive (relative risk, 2.772; 95% confidence interval, 2.720 to 2.824). The associations were higher in clinics that had separate prescribing and dispensing programs, or had professional staff. Conclusion: The introduction of an outpatient prescription incentive program for clinics effectively managed problems with rapid increases of pharmaceutical expenditures in South Korea. However, the pharmaceutical expenditures still increased in spite of the positive impact of the outpatient prescription incentive program. Therefore, healthcare professionals and health policy makers should develop more effective alternatives (i.e., for clinics without separate prescribing and dispensing programs) based on our results.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.202-208
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• 2019

Objective: Suicide has recently become an important social problem. Thus, we analyzed prescription drugs that cause suicidal ideation. Methods: Of 156 drugs on the the Minister of Food and Drug Safty (MFDS) EZ-Drug site that had "suicide" listed as a side effect, 78 had "suicide" listed as a warning or contraindication; those 78 drugs were analyzed using data from the 2016 Health Insurance and Review and Assessment Services National Patient Sample (HIRA-NPS). Results: 51 "suicide risk" drugs was identified. Of all patients, 5.2% had received such drugs. The prescription rate was 0.8% of all prescriptions, accounting for 1.6% of all prescription days. From logistic regression analysis, the prescription rate for the drugs was approximately 1.1 times higher for women than for men. With regard to age, the prescription rate for patients 66 years and older was 15.5 times higher than those for patients 25-years and lower. With regard to medical departments, the prescription rates in psychiatry and dermatology departments were 8.1 times higher and 0.6 times lower than those in internal medicine departments, respectively. With regard to region, the prescription rates in Daegu and Jeju were 1.3 times higher and 0.79 times lower than those in Seoul, respectively. Conclusion: Drug-induced suicidal behavior is possible, and therefore efforts are needed to prevent it.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.18-26
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• 2015

Background: The recent change in pharmaceutical education system following the paradigm shift to patient-oriented pharmacy service requires an in-depth discussion to reorganize a future direction and establish a basis for maximizing social values of community pharmacy service. Objective: This study was conducted to review the current status of community pharmacy service provision in Korea based on published literatures. Methods: The electronic databases of National Digital Science Library and Electronic National Assembly Library were used to search the journal articles and dissertation papers. A search term "community pharmacy" was used and the published period was limited to papers published after year 2001, when the legal separation of prescribing and dispensing was implemented. Relevant study reports were also searched manually. Information about pharmacy service provision and study outcomes were retrieved from the selected papers, and classified by predefined individual service scope. Results: A total 33 papers reporting services provided by community pharmacies were selected (journal article 11, dissertation paper 17, and study report 5). Pharmacy services identified in these papers could be classified into prescription dispensing service, pharmaceutical care service, self medication service, other products service, and health promotion service. Twenty papers reported prescription dispensing services, three papers reported pharmaceutical care service, and only two papers reported health promotion service. Current community pharmacy services are highly dependent on prescription drugs while expanded services such as pharmaceutical care and health promotion are peripheral. Most prevalent research topic was medication counseling service (18 papers), reflecting that community pharmacists generally consider it to be the most important and fundamental service. Overall, current pharmacy services are very limited and focus on prescription dispensing service. Conclusion: At this point of time requiring expansion and quality improvement of community pharmacy services, we suggest further lively discussion to strengthen pharmacist's functional identity and set conditions for providing socially expected services.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing Administration
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.136-146
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• 2009

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of copayments for doctor visits and prescription drugs on health services utilization in the Type I Medicaid beneficiaries in Korea. Method: This study examined data from the 2007 survey on Health Services Use and Health Status of Medicaid Beneficiaries performed by the Ministry for Health Welfare and Family Affairs. To analyze these sample survey data, the SURVEYFREQ, SURVEYMEANS, and SURVEYREG procedures which incorporate the sample design into the analyses were used. Results: Findings of this study indicate that copayments for doctor visits and prescription drugs of Medicaid Type I beneficiaries have cut overall medical costs. However, although results should be interpreted very carefully because of the relatively low $R^2$, copayments have cut more health services utilization of people who need more health services because of their complex diseases and disability. In addition, besides copayment, several factors are affecting differences in health services utilization before and after copayments implementation. Conclusion: These results highlight the need to examine the effects of copayments more thoroughly according to the kinds of disease, the severity of disease, and the level of copayment.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.24-32
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• 2009

Our society is rapidly ageing and income level is rising. With the development of IT-based convergence technology and the construction of infrastructure for the u-healthcare services, the importance of the hand acupuncture prescription has known as the folk remedies is being spotlighted. In this paper, we proposed the hand acupuncture prescription using the personalized symptom according to context in the u-healthcare. The proposed method defined the context and environment of the users and predicted the profited hand acupuncture prescription service according to the personalized symptom using the collaborative filtering. The user gets the accurate hand acupuncture prescription as the personalized symptom to input only the name of a disease in the proposed system. We developed GUI for this purpose, and experimented with it to verify the logical validity and effectiveness. Accordingly, the satisfaction and the quality of services will be improved the hand acupuncture prescription by supporting the context information as well as the personalized symptom.

• Convergence Security Journal
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.23-28
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• 2015

This study was carried out the exercise monitoring utilizing mobile device which is easily accessible and personalized exercise prescription based on it. For this, a variety of exercise monitoring and status of those were investigated and suggested the potential of personalized exercise prescription. If individual users send their body and vital informations using a mobile device, all informations are collected in u-Fitness center. After then exercise expert provide a customized prescription based on the collected information and feed data into database of u-Fitness center. System of U-Fitness center will provide the best personalized exercise prescription by automatically connecting to the content providers. In the future, a variety of mobile devices and services will work together and it can be evolved as an open platform that can be used for multiple services according to the needs of individual users on a single platform.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.249-255
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• 2011

Objective: To examine the drug use (prescribing) pattern of serious drug-drug interactions (DDIs, contraindicated drug interactions) using real world data. Prescription patterns were examined in terms of dispensing types. Method: Retrospective drug utilization review (DUR) study was performed. One hundred and six datasets of serious DDIs (DDI pairs) were determined among DDI datasets that Ministry of Health & Welfare announced for the DUR system from 2004 to 2005. Electronically transacted ambulatory patients' prescription database to Health Insurance Assessment and Review Services (HIRA) from July, 2005 to June, 2006 was collected with personal information deidentified and analyzed in terms of types of dispensing as a contributing factor. Results: After prescription data analysis per each patient, total number of DDI cases using 95 DDI pairs was 5,511, which accounted for 2.6 cases per patients. DDI cases between two drugs from each of community pharmacy dispensing- type prescription were considerable (63% vs. 24% in those from each of in-institutional dispensing-type prescription and vs. 13% in those from a community pharmacy dispensing-type prescription and an in-institutional dispensingtype prescription). Conclusions: DDI cases from different prescribers were found to be significant. Thus, the concurrent DUR process between prescriptions from different physicians and institutions should be implemented for the safe drug use.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.93-100
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• 2012

Objective: This study is to review the current state of services offered to pharmacy users, and develop a service design converging a prescription service and a smart phone application service in order to enhance patients' experience at pharmacies and home. Background: Under the new medical system; separation of prescribing and dispensing drugs, a doctor writes a prescription to their patients and patients have their prescription filled at the pharmacy. As the number of flue, allergy and atopy patients has increased, waiting lines have been longer at pharmacies. Besides, the current medical service system lacks of providing proper information on prescribed pills to patients. There are already services offered during waiting times such as offering free drinks, magazines or suggesting general drugs which you can buy without prescription, however they neither cover the current medical service's shorts nor shorten the waiting time. Method: I researched objective and perceived waiting times reduction methods, the current service status at pharmacies, and the government's policy direction in a medical service. Also, I observed a patient's journey from the hospital to pharmacy and then home. I examined the circumstance at pharmacies, patients' behaviors and their thoughts during their journey, and extracted three main goals to design a service in order to help patients have positive perception during the waiting time; (1) to reduce the perceived time by the way of visualizing time and offering readings about what patients consider necessary, (2) to educate patients what they are into and how to get through, (3) to establish trust among patients, doctors and pharmacists. Based on three goals, I designed a structure and a wireframe for a new service application of smart phones. Results: With a new service design for pharmacy users, users can track their medical record and visit the information about their current medical treatments anytime. Also the service helps patients build reliable relationships with doctors and pharmacists. Conclusion: Experience is not just an activity but series of multiple activities. The serving range of a medical service should not be determined by stakeholders but user's holistic experience. By approaching a service design with a holistic vision, it can enrich not only a temporary experience but also a whole life well being. Application: Since there are already many service applications advising patients about their illness and finding right doctors, this service design is focused on the experience from getting a prescription till feeling better. The next move is to combine those two parts medical services and design an integrated service application. As a prescription is going to be coded in numbers, we might consider to design an un-attended pharmacy which can shorten huge amount of time for filling prescriptions.