As we move forward at a greater speed into global economic world, the current international health care market and our position in the market provide a wide variety of economic and political issues for our health care professionals and our government entities to consider. To optimize medical care to denizens of Korea and to prepare to compete in global medical marketplace, Korean medical practitioners and institutions will face evolving, more refined, and more specific reviews of practice quality and practioner competence. These efforts will focus on reducing medical errors, improving communication with patients and medical providers, and enhancing clinical outcomes
Delivery of Health Care ; Health Care Sector ; Humans ; Korea ; Medical Errors ; Mental Competency ; Physician's Role

Systematic and effective welfare for the disabled is possible when there are scientific and objective criteria demonstrating either presence or severity of the impairment. We need our own scientific criteria suitable for our culture and society, since the impairment is influenced by them. In 2007, we established the Developing Committee of Korean Academy of Medical Sciences (KAMS) Guideline for Impairment Rating under KAMS supervision. We included all fixed and permanent physical impairments after a sufficient medical treatment. The impairment should be stable and medically measurable. If not, it should be reevaluated later. We benchmarked the American Medical Association Guides. The KAMS Guideline should be scientific, objective, valid, reasonable and practical. In particular, we tried to secure objectivity. We developed the KAMS Guideline for Impairment Rating.
*Disability Evaluation ; Humans ; Korea ; Program Development ; Questionnaires ; *Severity of Illness Index

BACKGROUND: In Korea, the separation of prescribing and dispensing medicine was finally accepted as a medical policy in July, 2000, after a long period of discussion and study which was started in 1963. Now a year after the policy started, we investigated the knowledge, attitude, and practice of separation of prescribing and dispensing medicine. METHODS: Information, concerning whether the policy was effectively carried out and well understood, were gathered from 383 patients, who visited an university hospital from August 20 to September 1, 2001. RESULTS: The results revealed that 73.1% of the subjects knew the policy precisely. However, only 1.6% of them could answer all four questions on the purpose of the policy. The old-aged, the low educated, the low socioeconomic groups and the residents in agricultural area revealed poor understanding of the policy (P<0.05). Among the total, 74.9% showed negative response toward the policy. Time and cost increment were 75.7% and 75.2%, respectively. Among them 61.1% revealed negative attitude towards continuance the policy and 93.2% revealed dissatisfaction of the policy. CONCLUSION: The knowledge of the policy was relatively high. However, negative attitudes prevailed on the continuance of the policy. Therefore, more solutions and better strategies for the problems of prescribing and dispensing medicine would be needed.
Humans ; Korea

No abstract available.
Health Policy* ; Research*

No abstract available.
Health Policy* ; Research*

No abstract available.
Delivery of Health Care* ; Jurisprudence* ; Korea*

No abstract available.
Dissent and Disputes*

No abstract available.
Insurance, Health*

No abstract available.
Delivery of Health Care* ; Korea*

The objective of this study is to identify the difference in attitude toward medical care between patients who visited a university hospital or an oriental medical hospital of oriental medical college, and physicians who engaged in the same hospitals. The subjects of this study were 397 cases who agreed to respond the prepared questionnaire, including 288 patients(146 university hospital utilizers and 142 utilizers for an oriental medical hospital) and 109 physicians(76 physicians and 33 oriental medical doctors). The attitude toward medical care was measured by the structured questionnaire developed for this study, which had high validity and reliability according to factor analysis, item discriminant validity, and Cronbach's alpha coefficients. On the criteria of mean value of care and cure score, the attitude toward medical care was classified into 4 groups encompassing a group with dependent attitude on medical care, a group with skeptical attitude toward it, a group with cure-oriented attitude, and a group with care- preferred attitude. The results of chi-square test, discriminant analysis, and logistic regression analysis were as follows; patients who visited a university hospital, patients who visited an oriental hospital, physicians, and oriental medical doctors included in the group with dependent attitude, the group with cure-oriented attitude, the group with skeptical attitude, and the group with care-preferred attitude, retrospectively. Among the subdomains of care and cure domains, which classified in reference to the result of factor analysis on pilot study, those that patients ranked more importantly than physicians were 'the importance of medical equipment for diagnosis and treatment', 'authority of physician, 'aggressiveness of treatment', 'information giving', 'personal interest' in the case of western medicine. In the case of oriental medicine, those were 'the importance of equipment for diagnosis and treatment', 'aggressiveness of treatment', 'amenities and accessibility', 'coordination of medical staff'. Both physicans and patients put the subdomain, 'physicians' medical knowledge and skillfulness' on the highest rank. The differences in ranking the important attributes of medical care between patients and physicians were apparent in the area of an 'importance of medical equipment for diagnosis and treatment' and so on. It meant that patient had over-expectation on medical care and suggested that the policy on demand side such as the development and dissemination of an evidence-based recommendation protocol for health care consumers might be important in Korea. In addition, regarding the attitude of physicians, during the medical education and training it may be necessary to emphasize the aspect of 'care' of medical care rather than 'cure'. In planning on heath care delivery system, it should be considered that there is a difference in the attitude toward medical care between western medicine and oriental medicine as well as between health care providers and consumers. We expect that more valid measurement tool be developed in this area, which may be major limitation of this study and that this kind of research be expanded into the non-academic settings.
Delivery of Health Care ; Diagnosis ; Education, Medical ; Health Personnel ; Humans ; Korea ; Logistic Models ; Medicine, East Asian Traditional ; Pilot Projects ; Surveys and Questionnaires ; Reproducibility of Results ; Retrospective Studies