A computerized hospital equipment utilization review system has been developed and implemented in a tertiary care utilization hospital in order to provide real-time equipment utilization with income information to be used in budgeting and strategic planning. Among various hospital fixed and clinical equipment, 283 (purchase price over US$15,000 per unit) were selected initially for utilization review. The application was written in Power Builder which was then loaded on Pentium client or on-line service. The data base management and statistical transactions were done by Oracle v 7.3.4 on NUMA Q2000 server. The utilization and associated income information of operating tables and other clinical equipment were automatically collected from physician order information in the hospital information system. Those information on other equipment which (lid not have direct utility information linked to physician order entry in the hospital information system were manually entered by users .Various utilization reports can be generated by users through computer menus; reports include name of equipment, using department, purchase price and year, frequency of use for inpatients and outpatients separately, income generated by such usage, and etc. The out put can also be generated by department, by instrument. by any interval as selected. The automated hospital equipment utilization review system has been developed and used since March, 2000 and is proven to he an essential tool for the hospital budget planners and managers. The outcome has been increasingly satisfactory.
Budgets ; Equipment and Supplies, Hospital* ; Hospital Information Systems ; Humans ; Inpatients ; Operating Tables ; Outpatients ; Tertiary Healthcare ; Utilization Review*

The objective of this study was to analyze the cost effectiveness of PACS with the coverage of the medical insurance. Direct and indirect costs and benefits of PACS as well as indirect effects were included in the analyses. Cost and benefit data were obtained from two user and two non-user hospitals located in Seoul and Kyunggi Province. Radiology technologists and clerks were surveyed to obtain data for indirect effects of PACS. The present value of the direct net benefit of PACS during the study period of five years estimated for a 740-bed hospital was about 744 mill ion Won and the benefit to cost ratio for the direct effect was 1.07. and the total net benefit was about 4.110 million Won and the benefit to cost ratio for the total effect was 1.36. Clerks at the user hospitals had significantly higher job satisfaction than their counterpart at the non-user hospitals for speedy lending (p<0.05) and good relationship with radiologists (p<0.0l). These study results indicated that PACS was cost beneficial with the coverage of the medical insurance and was effective in limited measures of quality of care and job satisfaction of employees at radiology departments as well. The study results also guaranteed further research that extend the scope to the physicians in clinical and radiology departments and nurses.
Cost-Benefit Analysis ; Gyeonggi-do ; Insurance Coverage* ; Insurance* ; Job Satisfaction ; Seoul

Nursing language plays an important role in describing and defining nursing phenomena and nursing actions. There are numerous vocabularies describing nursing diagnoses, interventions, and outcomes in nursing domain. However, lack of a standardized, unified nursing language is considered as a problem for further development of the discipline of nursing. With this background this study was conducted to construct a semantic network based on cross mapping of existing nursing terminologies. specifically NANDA taxonomy I, Omaha system, HHCC. and NIC. which arc recognized as standard terminology by the American Nurses Association. The nursing semantic network was proposed with the cross mapping results based on the UMLS semantic network.
American Nurses' Association ; Classification ; Nursing Diagnosis ; Nursing* ; Semantics* ; Unified Medical Language System ; Vocabulary

The purpose of this paper is to introduce standardization activities of nursing documentation for special nursing units following standardization efforts for general nursing units last year. Modified Delphi approach with expert panel was used to identify essential nursing documents and data set for each units. Expert panel was consisted of head nurses or charge nurses of each special nursing unit from 8 tertiary hospitals with more than 500 beds in Seoul. the secretary-general of Clinical Nurses Association and a faculty of College of Nursing. The exiting nursing forms of seven special nursing units, which include Emergency room, Intensive care unit, Operating room, Respiratory intensive care unit. Delivery floor. Nursery and Dialysis room, were analyzed and prototypes of the standard nursing forms and guidelines were developed. The clinical field test was done with the help of Clinical Nurses Association. At the field test 3.744 clinical staff nurses from 20 tertiary hospitals with more than 500 beds in Korea were involved and provided feedback. Finally public hearing was held and more than 600 nurses from 116 hospitals attended and provided feedback. Through these process consensus of nursing community was attained for standard documents and data items. The result is available at http://nursing.snu.ac.kr/standard/ through internet.
Consensus ; Dataset ; Dialysis ; Emergency Service, Hospital ; Hearing ; Intensive Care Units ; Internet ; Korea ; Nurseries ; Nursing* ; Nursing, Supervisory ; Operating Rooms ; Seoul ; Tertiary Care Centers

This study was performed to find a more efficient analytic method for medical record delivery process between using data collected from HIS and using data collected manually. And how to apply the Statistical Process Control technique to the quality measurement of work process. The results were as follows: 1. The method of using data collected from Hospital Information System was more efficient ( 99.2% ) than using data collected manually in time consumption. 2. The amount of analyzed data collected from HIS was amount about 3 times (279%) of those collected manually. 3. The application of Statistical Process Control technique for evaluating medical record delivery process was very effective to identify the problems in delivery process We identified the possibility that this statistical analytic technique of using data collected from HIS could be adopted to evaluate other process of healthcare management.
Delivery of Health Care ; Hospital Information Systems ; Medical Records*

The purpose of this study was to survey the organizational situation of medical record department(MRD) in hospitals to identify the factors influencing the production ol disease statistics in Korea. 134 hospitals answered for the structured questionnaires mailed to the 218 hospitals. This studs results are as follows. 1 ) There were three types in organizational situation of MRD: independent department (70.1%) a unit in other department (26.1 %) .and in the rest 3.7%. there were no MRD or unit. 2) The differences of work performed in MR ~) or on it in the second referral level hospitals and the third referral level hospitals were statistically significant in incomplete medical record management(p<0.05) DRG coding supplying research data, quality improvement activity. cancer registration(p<0.01) and transeription of medical record( p<0.0l). 3) 66.4% of the target hospitals were performing the recheeking of disease classification data after reponsible physicians completed the incomplete record 4) statistically significant variables which affect works performed in MRD are organizational situation of MRD(<0.001) and the number of medical record professionals. 41.3% of variation of works performed in MRD was explained by variation of organizational situation and the number of medical record professionals.
Classification ; Clinical Coding ; Diagnosis-Related Groups ; Korea ; Medical Records* ; Postal Service ; Quality Improvement ; Surveys and Questionnaires ; Referral and Consultation ; Data Accuracy

In this study, using the HL7 protocol, we developed patient management system gateway which is composed of 2 parts; message transferring-receiving and sentcncc generating-parsing part. To make the gateway more transplantable, it was developed on the PC operated with Windows OS. To make the gateway more productive, it was developed with Visual Basic 6.0. The database was built into MS SQL. Server which is most optimized on MS Windows NT system environment. This gateway system has the advantage of easy data-exchange capability between the patient management systems of medical facility and the messages transferred can he managed systematically and he transplanted easily into PC base hospital information system.
Hospital Information Systems ; Humans

Recent progress in medical informatics enable to use various medical regardless of time or place, to make a diagnostic and therapeutic plan, with increasing need about health of general population. There are many homepages on the web, which provide medical common senses, hospital information. and medical counseling on the web. Virtual Hospital, which is comprehensive medical information system on the web, has medical counseling program with various health information such as self-diagnosis, first-aid treatment information, drug information, Q and A, and so on. The aim of this study is to examine the content and purpose of medical counseling on the web. The subjects consisted of 277 counsels which visited 'Medical Counseling' in the Virtual Hospital for December 1996 through May 1997. Many questioners wanted to consult about their symptoms, to know prevention and treatment strategies, and to know specific medical knowledge. The most common questions are as follows: general and unspecified, digestive, musculoskeletal, and skin problems. These findings suggest medical counseling may be used to supplement the lack of direct medical Interviews with doctors.
Computer Communication Networks ; Counseling* ; Information Systems ; Internet* ; Medical Informatics ; Skin

Recently the changes in medical informatics enabled us to use medical information whenever we want and wherever we are. However, there are few information supporting systems on the web in occupational health field. So we have tried to make an occupational health information system (OHIS) based on the Internet and to provide occupational information to occupational health personnel. There were two steps for developing OHIS. First, we analyzed user's needs and existing information systems and then developed contents of our OHIS. Second, we constructed web server under the environment of Windows user, using operating system of windows NT 4.0 and web browsers of Netscape Navigator. Many users in worksites wanted information through the Internet. The contents of OHS which they wanted were information related to health education of workers, health counselling, news, and so on. The contents of OHIS which we forwarded were occupational health service, information about organization of occupational health, book references and journals, link-sites related to occupational health. In the future, this Interned-based OHIS will be an useful site offering a lot of information to occupational health personnel.
Health Education ; Health Information Systems* ; Information Systems ; Internet* ; Medical Informatics ; Occupational Health ; Occupational Health Services ; Occupations* ; Web Browser ; Workplace

This quasi-experimental study was conducted to explore what kind of impact a Web-based educational program can have on nursing students and how nursing students react to this educational program. A Web-based computer assisted instruction for maternity nursing practice was developed by researchers using Instruction System Design model and serviced far nursing students on the WWW. To study educational effect of this program on nursing students 30 senior students at a school of nursing were selected. They were assigned into experimental and control groups based on their maternity nursing practice schedule. The effect of the Web-based CAI was measured and compared between two groups using Achievement score, attitude toward learning experience and attitude toward computer and internet. There were significant differences between two groups in achievement and attitude scores. And students in the experimental group showed positive response to the Web-based CAI program. These results suggest that Web-based CAI can be used as a new teaching tool for maternity nursing practice as well as other nursing courses. Comments on program improvement and operational issues were collected from students. These will be used for program improvement in future.
Appointments and Schedules ; Computer-Assisted Instruction ; Humans ; Infant, Newborn ; Internet ; Learning ; Maternal-Child Nursing* ; Nursing* ; Pregnancy ; Students, Nursing