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*

No abstract available.
Jurisprudence*