A Study on the Spatial Structure Change of Elderly Care Facility according to Introduction of Long-Term Care Insurance

Abstract

Purpose : Long-term Care Insurance sets up facility standard and installation standard of aged care facilities and decides the presence of minimum number of rooms and its size in care facilities by using systematic instruments. Therefore, most aged care facilities had renovation in expansion and reconstruction following the revised regulations and even facility space structure and space composition are continuously improving. The study is to determine the purpose and trend by comparing before and after space composition of facilities which followed the implementation of Long-term Care Insurance and also to suggest hierarchical space composition suitable for aged care facilities through derived problems and to provide basic materials to plan the most appropriate facility for the aged. Methods : J-graph based on Space Syntax Theory will be schematized through in-site facility survey and before and after facility floor plan. Space composition trend will be analyzed by comparing indexes through S3 program. Results : As a result of 5 cases analysis, the following results were found; the average of whole space depth is increasing due to the Extension, the number of volunteers is decreasing and rooms for geriatric care helpers are being created due to the geriatric care helper introduction duty. Also, there are solariums being created to improve the health of the aged and dispensaries are being placed on every floor with the increase of documentary work for geriatric care helpers. With the policy implementation, care facility space composition and structure are changing with facility standard and it was analyzed that facilities were mostly put under the control of limited number of people in care room and total ground area per person. It was also found that there is increase in care space integration through before and after comparison of whole integration value. This is considered as the important result not only in facility standard satisfaction, but also in care support of geriatric care helpers and the aged, its main users. Implication :In order for elderly care facilities to have quality improvement and to develop as suitable facilities for characteristics of the aged, independent environmental facility standard preparation of elderly care facilities is needed through mutual cooperation of construction fields with regulation and policy related researches.

A Study on the Space Hierarchy According to the Plan Composition in Outpatient Department of Geriatrics Hospitals

“…As previously mentioned, coverage of this study has been limited to the senior hospitals in Korea where diverse researches are conducted on the recent surge of seniors, and selection of subject hospitals has been made by categorizing these into the tree and ring types of J-Graph. The resultant subjects are selected based on the related studies [1,8,9,10,11,12,13], the year when the hospital opened and its size. The tree type group includes Pyeongtaek Geriatric Hospital and Tongyeong Sanitorium Hospital, while the ring type group includes Bobath Memorial Hospital and Seoul Bukbu Geriatric Hospital.…”