- Minimum Optimal Scale of the Self-Employed Health insurance Programs in Korea.
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Gang Won Park, Jung Un Lee, Hae Kyung Kim, Ok Ryun Moon
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Korean J Prev Med. 1992;25(4):333-342.
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 Abstract
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- The purpose of this study is to estimate the minimum optimal scale(MOS) of the self-employed health insurance associations. Considering the high proportion of operating expenses, the author have selected 254 regional health insurance associations from the 1990 Finance Report of the self-employed health insurance programs. both a quadratic function and a hyperbolic function were chosen for the analysis. The dependent variables are the average maintenance cost per insured person and per household, and the independent variables are the number of insured members and of household. The minimum optimal scale was obtained from the differentiation of the quadratic function. Major findings are summarized as follows: 1. The M.O.S. was calculated as 166,174 members (27,442 households) for the rural self-employed health insurance associations and 258,462 members (75,446 households) for the urban. Providing that both the rural and urban health insurance associations would e integrated, the M.O.S. be found to become 231,687 members (68,101 households) 2. Compared with the optimal minimum scale, the magnitude of the current health insurance association found to be much smaller, less than half of the optimal scale. 3. In order to reduce the operating cost, it is necessary to enlarge the operational scale of self-employed health insurance associations.
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Summary
- An analysis of the physician productivity in general hospitals.
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Jung Un Lee, Ki Hyo Lee, Ok Ryun Moon
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Korean J Prev Med. 1991;24(3):400-413.
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Abstract
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- The purpose of this paper is to identify factors affecting the optimum mix of required inputs and other relevant factors which account for the variation in physician's productivity in general hospitals, and to find out their implications for the efficient health planning and management. An extended version of Cobb-Douglas production function and cross sectional data of one day patient census from all general hospitals in Korea in 1988 were used in the analysis. Main results of the analysis and their implications could be summarized as follows ; (1) The production function for physician's inpatient service shows the evidence of economies of scale, but the production function for physician's outpatient and adjusted-patient service, which combines both out- and inpatient service, shows that of dis-economies of scale. (2) The physician's role for production for all service is smaller than auxiliary personnel's, which imply that more intensive utilization of nurses, nursing aides and other auxiliary personnel is desirable for improving general hospital productivity. (3) In case of physician's inpatient and adjusted-patient service, nurses is recommended for the efficient operation of general hospitals. (4) The factor of hospital beds plays the leading role among required inputs in the production for physician's in- and adjusted-patient service. (5) The physician's productivity of general hospitals in rural area is lower than that in urban area. And the productivity of teaching hospitals is lower than that of the other hospitals. Further analysis was made in physician production function based upon the size of hospitals, namely those hospitals below 250 beds and those above. Explained variances by the factor of hospital beds was significantly increased in the case of those hospitals above 250. A more detailed and thorough investigation is needed for verifying factors influencing physician's productivity in general hospitals in Korea.
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