Poverty in the Midst of Plenty: Unmet Needs and Distribution of Health Care Resources in South Korea

Autor: Jukyung Kim, Juwhan Oh, Manwoo Lee, Ichiro Kawachi, Jin-Seok Lee, Soonman Kwon, Jongho Heo, S. V. Subramanian
Rok vydání: 2012
Předmět:
Adult
medicine.medical_specialty
Economic growth
Non-Clinical Medicine
Epidemiology
Science
Global Health
Health Economics
Environmental health
Republic of Korea
Health care
Prevalence
medicine
Global health
Humans
Geographic and National Differences
Health Care Quality
Health Systems Strengthening
Poverty
health care economics and organizations
Health policy
Health Services Needs and Demand
HRHIS
Health Care Policy
Multidisciplinary
Health economics
business.industry
Public health
Health Services Administration and Management
Health services research
Socioeconomic Aspects of Health
Social Epidemiology
Logistic Models
Hospital Bed Capacity
Multilevel Analysis
Health Resources
Medicine
Health Services Research
Public Health
Behavioral and Social Aspects of Health
business
Delivery of Health Care
Research Article
Health care quality
Zdroj: PLoS ONE, Vol 7, Iss 11, p e51004 (2012)
PLoS ONE
ISSN: 1932-6203
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0051004
Popis: BackgroundThe unmet needs for health care have been used as an alternative measurement to monitor equity in health services. We sought to examine contextual influences on unmet needs for health care whereas precedent studies have been focused on individual characteristics on them.Methods and findingsThe current study conducted multilevel logistic regression analysis to assess the effects of individual- and contextual-level predictors in meeting individual health care needs in South Korea. We sampled 7,200 individuals over the age of 19 in the Fourth Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey in 2009. Included in the regression model were individual predictors such as demographic variables, socio-economic status, and self-rated health; the density of beds and physicians in public and private sectors within different regions were used as contextual-level predictors. This study showed the inverse association between unmet needs and regional resources in private sectors after controlling for the effects of individual-level predictors.ConclusionOur findings suggest that increasing regional resources in private sectors might produce inefficiency in the health care system and inequity in access to health services, particularly where the competition in private health care sectors was highly stimulated under the fee-for-service reimbursement scheme. Policies for the reallocation of health care resources and for reduction of individual health care costs are needed in Korea.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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