Korean National Health Insurance (NHI) was established during only 12 yr from its inception (1977-1989), providing universal medical coverage to the entire nation and making a huge contribution to medical security. However, the program now faces many challenges in terms of sustainability. The low birth rates, aging population, low economic growth, and escalating demands for welfare, as well as unification issues, all add pressure to the sustainability of NHI. The old paradigm of low contribution - low benefits coverage - low NHI's fee schedule needs to be replaced by a new paradigm of proper contribution - adequate benefit coverage - fair NHI's fee schedule. This new paradigm will require reform of NHI's operating system, funding, and spending.
This study aimed to discover to what extent ethical issues are considered in the reimbursement decision process based on health technology assessment (HTA) in Korea, especially for oncology medications. Public summary documents (PSDs) published by the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRA) were analyzed for empirical and normative factors. For external comparison, PSDs presented by corresponding institutions of Australia and the United Kingdom were employed. Furthermore, the opinions of eight expert oncologists were obtained regarding the accountability of the evidence in PSDs. Among 7 oncology drugs, there were differences evidencebetween the PSDs from the three institutions. From an ethical viewpoint, the following matters were Health technology assessment -ethics -economic analysis -cost-effectiveness analysis -Korea
The purpose of this study was to investigate the curriculum of geriatric dentistry for undergraduates in Korean dental schools.Background: For development purposes, it was necessary to compare geriatric dentistry education programmes in South Korea to programmes in the United States and Europe.
Methods:The most recent curriculum and related information on geriatric dentistry at the undergraduate level in all 11 dental schools in South Korea were collected by both official letter and e-mail. A symposium for gathering expert opinions to improve geriatric dentistry education in South Korea was also held. The collected data were analysed, and the expert opinions at the symposium were summarised.Results: Six of 11 schools had a didactic course as compulsory and three schools as elective. The course was usually conducted as a form of integrated lectures, and the level of standardisation of lecture content was very low. There were no topics for older people who cannot access dental clinics due to functional frailty or disability.No dental school-affiliated hospitals had an independent department for geriatric dentistry. No schools provided clinical teaching for geriatric dentistry. There were no outreach programmes for geriatric dentistry.
Conclusions:The educational curriculum for geriatric dentistry in South Korea was insufficient to cope with social and demographic changes. Curriculum content should include clinical practice education and needs to be focused on frail and dependent older adult patients. An essential educational curriculum and core competency for geriatric dentistry should be prepared.
Dentist-patient communication has long been recognized as an important part of dental care. It has many positive outcomes, including reducing patient dental anxiety and increasing patient satisfaction and patient compliance. Above all, the need to communicate through conversation with dentist must be perceived as a basic dental patient's need for good clinical outcomes. In the future, increasing geriatric dental patients will pose challenges to dental profession. Factors influencing dentist-geriatric patient communication should be researched and relevant techniques should be shared among dentists.
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