• Health Policy and Management
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.3-10
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• 2015

Background: Previous studies showed differences in healthcare utilization among insurance types. This study aimed to analyze the difference in healthcare utilization for percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty inpatients by insurance types after controlling factors affecting healthcare utilization using propensity score matching (PSM). Methods: The 2011 national inpatient sample based on health insurance claims data was used for analysis. PSM was used to control factors influencing healthcare utilization except insurance types. Length of stay and total charges were used as healthcare utilization variables. Patients were divided into National Health Insurance (NHI) and Medical Aid (MA) patients. Factors representing inpatients (gender, age, admission sources, and Elixhauser comorbidity index) and hospitals (number of doctors, number of beds, and location of hospitals) were used as covariates in PSM. Results: Tertiary hospitals didn't show significant difference in length of stay and total charges after PSM between two insurance types. However, MA patients showed significantly longer length of stay than that of NHI patients after PSM in general hospitals. Multivariate regression analysis provided that admission sources, Elixhauser comorbidity index, insurance types, number of doctors, and location of hospitals (province) had significant influences on the length of stay in general hospitals. Conclusion: Study results provided evidences that healthcare utilization was differed by insurance types in general hospitals. Health policy makers will need to prepare interventions to influence the healthcare utilization differences between insurance types.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.397-413
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• 2011

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between the income level and the healthcare utilization by health insurance type in all cancer patients in year 2005. Methods: The target population was cancer patients with health insurance who used healthcare as a diagnosis code (C00-C97) from January 1 to December 31 of 2005. The Korea Central Cancer Registry Center's Cancer Patient Registry Data, the list of cancer patients of the National Health Insurance Corporation, and the claim data of the Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service were used. The I was the wealthiest, followed by II, III, IV. The V was the poorest in this study. For the analysis, the $x^2$-test, ANOVA (and Kruskal-Wallis test), and regression were used. Results: Outpatient and hospitalization medical expenses, and outpatient visit days of cancer patients with self-employed health insurance were highest in I (p<.001, respectively), and the hospitalization days were the highest in II (p<.001, respectively). Outpatient and hospitalization medical expenses, and outpatient visit and hospitalization days of cancer patients with occupational health insurance were the highest in I (p<.001, respectively). Outpatient and hospitalization medical expenses, and outpatient visit and hospitalization days in cancer patients were higher in I compared to V, and higher in II and III, IV compared to V (p<.001, respectively). Conclusion: Supporting plan for cancer patients' outpatient healthcare utilization are necessary. Moreover, we should make specialized strategy for low income cancer patients with self-employed health insurance when we develop quality improvement policy for inpatient service.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.248-261
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• 2019

Establishing a healthcare delivery system is key to building a cost-effective healthcare system that can prevent the waste of healthcare resources and increase efficiency. Recently, the rapid increase in the national medical expenditures due to the aging of the population and the increase in chronic diseases has raised the question about the sustainability of the healthcare system including the health insurance system. This is why we need to reform the medical delivery system, including the function setting of medical institutions. Accordingly, gradual and practical efforts based on the recognition of reality are needed for solving the problems and improving the medical delivery system. The first effort is to secure policy measures to establish functions and roles of medical institutions which are the basis of the healthcare delivery system, and a systematic medical use system for appropriate medical use. This approach can be achieved through a reasonable health insurance schemes. Without reasonable reform efforts, it will be difficult for Korea's health care system to develop into a system that can provide cost-effective and high-quality medical services that the people want.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.148-155
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• 2012

Since the reformation of the National Health Insurance Act in 2000, the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRA) in the Republic of Korea has performed quality assessments for healthcare providers. The HIRA Value Incentive Program (VIP), established in July 2007, provides incentives for excellent-quality institutions and disincentives for poorquality ones. The program is implemented based on data collected between July 2007 and December 2009. The goal of the VIP is to improve the overall quality of care and decrease the quality gaps among healthcare institutions. Thus far, the VIP has targeted acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and Caesarian section (C-section) care. The incentives and disincentives awarded to the hospitals by their composite quality scores of the AMI and C-section scores. The results of the VIP showed continuous and marked improvement in the composite quality scores of the AMI and C-section measures between 2007 and 2010. With the demonstrated success of the VIP project, the Ministry of Health and Welfare expanded the program in 2011 to include general hospitals. The HIRA VIP was deemed applicable to the Korean healthcare system, but before it can be expanded further, the program must overcome several major concerns, as follows: inclusion of resource use measures, rigorous evaluation of impact, application of the VIP to the changing payment system, and expansion of the VIP to primary care clinics.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.48 no.6
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• pp.319-329
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• 2015

Objectives: Parental socioeconomic status (SES) exerts a substantial influence on children's health. The purpose of this study was to examine factors determining children's private health insurance (PHI) enrolment and children's healthcare utilization according to PHI coverage. Methods: Korea Health Panel data from 2011 (n=3085) was used to explore the factors determining PHI enrolment in children younger than 15 years of age. A logit model contained health status and SES variables for both children and parents. A fixed effects model identified factors influencing healthcare utilization in children aged 10 years or younger, using 2008 to 2011 panel data (n=9084). Results: The factors determining children's PHI enrolment included children's age and sex and parents' educational status, employment status, and household income quintile. PHI exerted a significant effect on outpatient cost, inpatient cost, and number of admissions. Number of outpatient visits and total length of stay were not affected by PHI status. The interaction between PHI and age group increased outpatient cost significantly. Conclusions: Children's PHI enrolment was influenced by parents' SES, while healthcare utilization was affected by health and disability status. Therefore, the results of this study suggest disparities in healthcare utilization according to PHI enrollment.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.53-65
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• 2009

Purpose: This study was conducted to identify the prenatal heath care utilization and expenditure among pregnant women. Method: This was a 5-month follow-up study using a stratified sampling and the data were drawn from the "nationwide claim database of Korean National Health Insurance Corporation". Result: This study found that pregnant women were first diagnosed with pregnancy when they were 7.1 weeks pregnant, received 12.7 times of prenatal examinations and 10.6 times of ultrasonogram. It was revealed that 67.5% of the subjects continued to receive prenatal care at the same medical institutions from the diagnosis of pregnancy to the delivery. The study also showed that the total expenditure of prenatal care per pregnant woman was 700,000 Korean Won (KRW) on average and the insurance coverage rate stood at only 20%. Pregnant women living in metropolitan area spent more on prenatal healthcare expenditure than those who living in medium-sized city or rural area. Conclusion: The results of this study implies that the government needs to provide pregnant women with continuous support by increasing health insurance coverage for prenatal care. Especially, it is considered to provide more support to the pregnant women residing in medically underserved areas.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.191-198
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• 2017

Moon Jae-in Government announced the Government's 5-Year Plan on July 19, 2017, President Moon directly announced the Government's Plan for Benefit Expansion in National Health Insurance on August 7, 2017. The main contents of the announced expansion include benefit coverage for all medically necessary services with control over non-covered service occurrence, a decrease in the cost-sharing upper limit, and monetary support for catastrophic medical costs. Although past governments have been continuously striving for benefit expansion in the last 15 years, this plan has its breakthrough aspect in that all medical services will be covered by the National Health Insurance. In alignment, there are important tasks to solve: attaining a proper fee schedule, reforming the healthcare delivery system, and improving healthcare quality. This plan is a symptom oriented action in that it is limited in reducing patients' out-of-pocket money, unlike the systematic approach of the National Health Insurance. The sustainability of the National Health Insurance is being threatened due to South Korea's low birth rate, rapidly aging society, and low economic growth, in addition to the unification issue of the Korean Peninsula, medical utilization of the elderly, management of non-communicable diseases, and so on. Therefore, the Government needs to plan the National Health Insurance system reformation including actions addressed toward medical consumers.

• The Korean Journal of Health Service Management
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.177-192
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• 2011

The arguments exist that private health insurance(PHI) policy holders tend to use the health care services more than non-policy holders due to their little out-of-pocket spending, resulting in the adverse effects on the finances of National Health Insurance. This study aims to increase the objective understanding of the issue and to draw a direction of further research, by reviewing the articles, reports and statistics which examined the effects of purchasing PHI policies on health care utilization. Significant differences in healthcare utilization, except for the very partial increase of utilization in outpatient settings, have been not found. The similar trends of the results have existed in a few previous studies which tried to control the endogeneity of medical use and health insurance with latent variables which affect the decision on medical use and health insurance. However, we can not exclude the potential change of healthcare utilization patterns because the portion of the insured of indemnity PHI is becoming rapidly larger in the market. For further research, we should try to obtain the objective information of subjects' past medical history, health status, health related behavior, and income affecting purchase of PHI and utilization of healthcare services. And the efforts of controlling the endogeneity of medical use and health insurance with latent variables which affect the decision on medical use and health insurance, are very considerable.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.184-194
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• 2019

Background: The extent of coverage rate of the public health insurance is still insufficient to meet healthcare needs. Private health insurance (PHI) plays a role to supplement coverage level of national health insurance in Korea. It is expected that reduce unmet need healthcare. This study was aimed to identify relationship between PHI type and the unmet healthcare need and its associated factors. Methods: Data were obtained from the 2014 Korea Health Panel Survey using nationally representative sample was analyzed. Respondents were 8,667 who were adults over 20 years covered by PHI but have not changed their contract. According to the enrollment form, PHI was classified into three types: fixed-benefit, indemnity, and mixed-type. To identify factors associated with unmet needs, multiple logistic regression conducted using the Andersen model factors, which are predisposing factors, enabling factors, and need factors. Results: Our analysis found that subjects who had PHI with mixed-type were less likely to experience unmet health care needs compared than those who did not have it (odds ratio, 0.80; 95% confidence interval, 0.66-0.98). As a result of analyzing what affected their unmet healthcare needs, the significant factors associated with unmet medical need were gender, marital status, residence in a metropolitan area, low household income, economic activity participation, self-employed insured, physically disabled, low subjective health status, and health-risk factors such as current smoking and drinking. Conclusion: The results of this study suggest that having PHI may reduce experience of unmet healthcare needs. Findings unmet healthcare needs factors according to various subjects may be useful in consideration of setting policies for improving accessibility to healthcare in Korea.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.33-42
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• 2019

Purpose: many domestic welfare programs use the amount of health insurance premiums as a way of measuring individuals' income levels for administrative convenience. As health insurance reform has been made, we examines the income level is still appropriately measured by the health insurance premiums for the employment success package as one of domestic welfare program. Methodology/Approach: we investigate whether the upper limit of the premiums of the self-employed health insured is appropriate or not after healthcare reform, which currently calculated by multiplying the insurance premium of the employee based insured by the adjustment factor (1.2). Findings: we examined appropriateness of the adjustment factors by comparing the premiums before and after the healthcare reform by utilizing the national health insurance data as well as Korea Welfare panel data. We found that the new value of adjustment factor (1.0~1.1) is smaller than the current one (1.2). Practical Implications: to improve the equity between the employee and the self-employed insured after the health insurance reform, the adjustment factor should be lower.