ArticleJournal of Korean medical science2014
Evidence of a broken healthcare delivery system in korea: unnecessary hospital outpatient utilization among patients with a single chronic disease without complications.
Article in Journal of Korean medical science, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 51 papers.
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Who cites it
51 citing papers in PubMed, 65 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Changes in usual source of care utilization during the COVID-19 pandemic: a comparative analysis by chronic disease status.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- Income-Based Inequalities in Health System Performance in the US and South Korea.JAMA health forum · 2026Article
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- Cancer care patterns in South Korea: Types of hospital where patients receive care and outcomes using national health insurance claims data.Cancer medicine · 2023Article
- Unmet Needs and Barriers in Providing Hospital Care for Older Adults: A Qualitative Study Using the Age-Friendly Health System Framework.Clinical interventions in aging · 2023Article
- The ecology of medical care in Korea: the association of a regular doctor and medical care utilization.BMC health services research · 2022Article
- National Trends in Hospitalization for Ambulatory Care Sensitive Conditions among Korean Adults between 2008 and 2019.Yonsei medical journal · 2022Article
- A focus group interview with health professionals: establishing efficient transition care plan for older adult patients in Korea.BMC health services research · 2022Article
- Behavioral and Disease-Related Characteristics of Patients with Acute Stroke during the Coronavirus Disease Pandemic.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Physician-Customized Strategies for Reducing Outpatient Waiting Time in South Korea Using Queueing Theory and Probabilistic Metamodels.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Comparison of Health Outcomes by Care Provider Type for Newly Diagnosed Mild Type 2 Diabetes Patients in South Korea: A Retrospective Cohort Study.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- A Descriptive Study of Emergency Department Visits Within 30 Days of Discharge.Annals of geriatric medicine and research · 2021Article
- Varied impacts on outpatient services among departments and divisions in the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic: Implications for personnel mobilization and preparatory training.Journal of the Chinese Medical Association : JCMA · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 5 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
This study aims to estimate the volume of unnecessarily utilized hospital outpatient services in Korea and quantify the total cost resulting from the inappropriate utilization. The analysis included a sample of 27,320,505 outpatient claims from the 2009 National Inpatient Sample database. Using the Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI), patients were considered to have received 'unnecessary hospital outpatient utilization' if they had a CCI score of 0 and were concurrently admitted to hospital for treatment of a single chronic disease - hypertension (HTN), diabetes mellitus (DM), or hyperlipidemia (HL) - without complication. Overall, 85% of patients received unnecessary hospital services. Also hospitals were taking away 18.7% of HTN patients, 18.6% of DM and 31.6% of HL from clinics. Healthcare expenditures from unnecessary hospital outpatient utilization were estimated at: HTN (94,058 thousands USD, 38.6% of total expenditure); DM (17,795 thousands USD, 40.6%) and HL (62,876 thousands USD, 49.1%). If 100% of patients who received unnecessary hospital outpatient services were redirected to clinics, the estimated savings would be 104,226 thousands USD. This research proves that approximately 85% of hospital outpatient utilizations are unnecessary and that a significant amount of money is wasted on unnecessary healthcare services; thus burdening the National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) and patients.
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