• Journal of Society of Preventive Korean Medicine
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.27-38
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• 2016

Backgrounds : Taiwan has similar national health insurance (NHI) system for traditional medicine with South Korea. Recently, new quality improvement policies for traditional medicine is being attempted in Taiwan. Objectives : This study aimed to review the Taiwanese NHI system for Chinese Medicine (CM) and introduce quality improvement policies. Methods : Research articles, reports, government publications and year books which handled traditional medicine system and NHI system in Taiwan were searched and collected. The authors analyzed and summarized the contents in a qualitative manner. Results : In Taiwanese NHI system, CM procedures and medication for outpatients are reimbursed through a mix of fee-for-service and global budget payment system. CM shares 4% of total expenditure of NHI in Taiwan. Mostly, the expenses for procedures are reimbursed regardless of disease type, however, in the specialized program for quality improvement, CM doctors have to comply with standard operating procedures (SOPs). Conclusions : Taiwanese NHI system implemented SOP-based new reimbursement system for CM. Yet, the scientific evidences for SOPs are not sufficient, it can be useful references when we develope disease related reimbursement system for Korean Medicine in South Korea.

• Anxiety and mood
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.108-114
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• 2017

Objective : A pilot project entitled '50s mental health screening project' was conducted in Seoul. As a part of this project, we conducted surveys to obtain the opinions of psychiatrists regarding mental health screenings. Methods : A questionnaire was mailed to members registered with the Korean Neuropsychiatric Association, which enquired about the '50s mental health screening project'. Results: A majority (90.9%) of the subjects agreed on the purpose and implementation of the project. However, there were fewer individuals that actually showed the intent to participate (65.8%). The mean age of the group with the intention to participate was higher compared to the group with no intention to participate. The factors that negatively affected the intent to participate included prejudice and discrimination against psychiatry (3.795), low health insurance reimbursement (3.784), and inconvenience of reporting to public health centers (3.664). The most appropriate method that scored the highest for screening mental health was face-to-face consultation with a psychiatrist (3.889). Most of the participants agreed on the method of a self-reported survey along with an interview of psychiatrist (84.9%). Conclusion : Subjects were concerned about prejudice and discrimination against psychiatry, low health insurance reimbursement, and inconvenience of reporting to public health centers. These problems need to be supplemented. Face-to-face consultation with a psychiatrist may be considered an appropriate method for future mental health screening.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Medical Physics Conference
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• 2002.09a
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• pp.28-31
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• 2002

Filmless full-PACS in korea has rapidly been growing, since government had supported collaborative PACS project between industry and university hospital in late of 1995. At the same time, a small company had started PACS business, while the Korea PACS society was being formed. In the beginning, PACS societies had focused on developing peripheral solutions such as DICOM gateway for image acquisition, x-ray film digitizer, and viewing software for research or management of personal image data, while Samsung Medical Center had started installing an imported partial PACS system which had recently upgraded with a new system. In similar time frame, a few hospitals had started developing and installing domestic large scale full-PACS system. Several years later, many hospitals have installed full-PACS system with national policy of reimbursement for PACS exams in November 1999. It is believed that Korea is the first country that adopted PACS reimbursement for filmless full-PACS as a national policy. Both experiences of full-PACS installation and national policy generated tremendous intellectual and technological expertise about PACS at all levels, clinical, hospital management, education, and industrial sectors. There are currently three types of PACS system which includes domestic, imported, and hybrid PACS system with imported solution for core system and domestic solution for peripheral system. There are more than 20 domestic PACS companies and they have now enough experiences so that they are capable of installing a truly full-PACS system for large-scale teaching hospitals. PACS societies in Korea understand how to design, implement, install, manage, sustain, and provide good services for large-scale full-PACS. PACS society has also strength for the highest integration technology of the Hospital Information. However, further understanding and timely implementation of continuously evolving international standard and integrated healthcare enterprise concepts may be necessary for international leading of PACS technologies for the future.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.1-24
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• 2007

The medical fee reimbursement denied by HIRA(Health Insurance Review Agency) amounted to about 1.2% of the total medical fee claim to HIRA for reimbursement. Most of the denials stem from the inappropriate prescriptions of medical staff violating the medical fee review standards issued by HIRA. Considering the significant impacts of the standards observance behavior on the hospitals' financial viability, we attempted to analyze the predisposition factors of medical staffs' review standards observance behavior. The TPB(Theory of Planned Behavior) was adopted as the theoretical framework of the analysis. Data were collected by administrating a survey on the concepts included in TPB model to the 187 medical staff of a tertiary care hospital. Of the 187 questionaries distributed, 150 were responded resulting 80.2% of response rate. The mean differences among the groups classified by age group, years of experience, medical specialty and gender were analysis using ANOVA. The relationships among the TPB concepts were analysed by applying the Structural Equations Modeling method. The TPB model consists of three exogenous concepts (attitude toward the behavior, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control) and two endogenous concepts (intention and the behavior). The results of ANOVA indicated significant mean differences among the groups classified by the medical staff's age, years of experience, and medical specialty. The older and the more experienced had the higher mean of observance behavior score. The results of Structural Equations analysis showed that the subjective norm and perceived behavioral control had statistically significant influences on intention, but the influence of attitude to intention was not statistically significant. The influences of perceived behavioral control and intention on behavior were significant. Based on these results the theoretical and practical implications were discussed.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.16-36
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• 2005

Due to the existence of asymmetry of information between doctor and patient, it has been believed that doctor might affect patient's decision making process of purchasing medical care. Based on this notion, doctor's reimbursement method has been suggested as an effective policy device of improving efficiency of patient's medical care use by way of its affecting doctor's practice pattern. By using the Community Tracking Study (CTS) household and physician data set, which includes not only various information on patient's medical care use, but doctor's practice arrangements and sources of practice revenue, this paper investigates the effect of community doctor's characteristics of reimbursement method on community patient's medical care use under the control of patient's socio-demographic characteristics and community doctor's practice type. In the process of estimating econometric model, the endogeneity problem of individual health insurance purchase was corrected by using 2818. And due to the existence of sample selection problem, Heckman's two-step estimation method was used for strengthen the robustness of estimation which was adversely affected by sample selection problem The empirical results show that as the average value of community doctor's portion of practice revenue determined by prospective method out of total revenue increases, the community patient's total out-of-pocket medical cost decreases. This results suggest, as doctor's practice revenues are mainly determined by prospective method, such as capitation, doctors would be more conscious about practice cost, which might affect doctor's practice pattern and by which his/her patient's use of medical care would decrease.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.209-216
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• 2020

As depository system for negotiation or reimbursement to the victim in criminal case is reflected to consideration for diminishing punishment and hence, it is very important in the process. According to the current law, one needs to fill out victim's personal information such as name, address, and ID number for processing depository. However, if the victim is sexual violence victim, all the personal information is covered up becoming anonymous. Therefore, it becomes difficult for the accused person to get necessary information. Such covering up action is to prevent further second damage that may be caused such as threatening for the negotiation whereas victim has no willingness to forgive the accused. However, even if the accused person regrets his/her crime and make reimbursement to the victim, as they have no personal information on the victim it becomes impossible for them to make the depository. If we apply ESCROW system here it will allow victims to avoid any direct contact with the accused person as well as preventing any privacy disclosure. Also, for the accuse person, they can show how much they regret by making depository within their capability.

• Korean Journal of Acupuncture
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.21-26
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• 2013

Objectives : The purpose is to introduce the recent large-scale clinical researches for safety, efficacy and effectiveness of acupuncture in Germany. Results : In 2000, the German Federal Committee of Physicians and Health insurer proposed that large research initiatives on acupuncture, Acupuncture Model Projects(Modellvorhaben Akupunktur), could be conducted by health insurance companies for several pain that acupuncture is syndromes to justify the insurance-based reimbursement. Accordingly, 4 clinical researches were carried out; the Acupuncture Safety and Health economics studies(ASH), the Acupuncture Randomised Trial(ART), the Acupuncture in Routine Care studies(ARC), and the German Acupuncture trial(GERAC). Meanwhile, ASH is a prospective observational study for safety and costs. ART and GERAC are composed of RCTs for efficacy. ARC includes 6 pragmatic RCTs with additional non-randomized cohort study for effectiveness. We investigated the papers related to them and discussed about the outcomes. The researches showed that acupuncture is effective in practice for several chronic conditions such as migraine, tension-type headache, chronic low back pain, osteoarthritis of knee, dysmenorrhea, and allergic rhinitis. Based in part on them, the German health authorities decided that acupuncture would be included into routine reimbursement by social health insurance funds for chronic low back pain and chronic osteoarthritis of the knee in 2006. Conclusions : The German clinical researches may suggest the clues for establishing the evidence of acupuncture treatment.

• Journal of Technologic Dentistry
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.78-104
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• 1994

Under the fee for service schedule of Korean health insurance system, rational fee for dental laboratory products based on the cost is required to be formulated. The purpose of this study was to find actual cost of dental laboratory products in case of a University Hospital. Materials of this study were used as follows : 1. Balance sheet at Dec. 31, 1992 and profit and loss report of the year 1992 of the sample hospital 2. Performance report of dental laboratory department. 3. Purchasing and other accounting bills of dental laboratory materials. The following methods were used. 1. Actual cost finding of dental laboratory department was performed. 2. Work sampling methods were used for measuring standard working time by the process of working. 3. To porcelain fused to metal crown(non-precious), Relative value of the cost of dental laboratory products was calculated as 1.00. 4. Fee and cost of those products were compared on the basis of Relative values. The results of the study can be summarized as follow : 1. Overall, it took longs time than other items. to product denture-related items. 2. When several teeth are made in a time, average production time is much sorter than when one tooth is made in a time. 3. The relative price cost of Dicor cast crown and denture related items are higher than the criterion items. 4. The material cost occupies average 11% out of the total price cost, proportion of personnel expenses is average as 60.0%. 5. Some of the components consisting of the price cost are not reflected adequately in setting the level of the reimbursement price. 6. Relative values of dental laboratory products price cost are varied in the range from 0.05 to 2.83, overall, the reimbursement price of dental products appears not to reflect adequately the price cost. On the basis of this study results, the following ideas would be suggested : 1. Fee Schedule of dental laboratory products should be renovated in order to reflect their costs. 2. Dental laboratory product manufacturers should be enlarged for the economy of scale which may be useful for cost- containment. 3. Dental laboratory producters themselves are required to be standardiqed according to the categories of skill.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.64 no.4
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• pp.141-148
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• 2021

There are very scant data on the epidemiology of primary immunodeficiency diseases (PIDs) in Korea. Here we attempted to estimate the PID epidemiology and disease burden in Korea. A systematic review was performed of studies retrieved from the PubMed, KoreaMed, and Google Scholar databases. Studies on PIDs published in Korean or English between January 2001 and November 2018 were analyzed. The number of PID patients and the healthcare costs were estimated from Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRA) Korea data for 2017. A total of 398 PID patients were identified from 101 reports. Immunodeficiencies affecting cellular and humoral immunity were reported in 11 patients, combined immunodeficiency with associated or syndromic features in 40, predominantly antibody deficiencies in 144, diseases of immune dysregulation in 58, congenital defects of phagocytes in 104, defects in the intrinsic and innate immunity in 1, auto-inflammatory disorders in 4, complement deficiencies in 36, and phenocopies of PID in none. From the HIRA reimbursement data, a total of 1,162 outpatients and 306 inpatients were treated for 8,166 and 6,149 days, respectively. In addition, reimbursement was requested for 8,200 outpatient and 1,090 inpatient cases and $1,924,000 and $4,715,000 were reimbursed in 2017, respectively. This study systematically reviewed published studies on PID and analyzed the national open data system of the HIRA to estimate the disease burden of PID, for the first time in Korea.

• Journal of Oriental Neuropsychiatry
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.31-38
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• 2019

Objectives: To identify the cost effectiveness of early dementia diagnosis using the 2014 Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service-National Patients Sample (HIRA-NPS). Methods: The medical costs of dementia between Western medical care and Korean medical care were compared through the reimbursement and non-reimbursement item code for dementia examination. In addition, the medical expenses of patients with dementia and mild cognitive impairment were compared and analyzed with respect to Western and Korean medical care. Results: There were 87,434 claims, of which 16,101 patients were diagnosed with dementia and 38,680,789,560 won was found to be the medical expenses. 12,881 patients (80.0%) with dementia, 3,144 patients (19.5%) with mild cognitive impairment, and 76 patients (0.5%) progressing from mild cognitive impairment to dementia. The proportion of medical expenses was 97.6% for dementia patients, 2.3% for mild cognitive impairment, and 1% for patients progressing from mild cognitive impairment to dementia. 86,070 claims (98.4%) were from Western medical care, with16,824 patients (98.2%), and the medical expenses was 38,546,895,400 won (99.7%). 1,361 claims (1.6%) were from Korean medical care, with 303 patients (1.8%), and the medical expenses was 133,894,160 won (0.3%). Conclusions: This study compared and analyzed the medical costs of dementia patients and the diagnosis of both Korean and Western medical care. The results of this study are expected to be used as basic research data for investigating cost effectiveness of developing early diagnosis of dementia.