Abstract
ABSTRACT Objective:To investigate the current status of prescription drugs in Orie ntal medical institutes and to draw up a future plan for the revitalization of Oriental medical health insurance, this survey has been performed.Method:The survey has been made with 321 doctors working at Oriental medical institutes in Daegu and Kyungbuk areas for a period of 3 month from June 1, 2010 until September 1, 2010. Result:1. When it comes to the current status of the use of herbal dru gs in Oriental Health insurance, most of doctors surveyed prescribe insurance drugs, and they prescri be insurance drugs to patients, who are less than 20% of total patients visiting their clinics. 2. The awareness of Herbal Health Care Drugs is investigated. When it comes to the understanding of the difference between insurance drugs(powder type drugs) and granu lar type drugs, doctors admit that they differ only in one aspect, whether or not their being covered by health insurance. Based on the survey results on the understanding of insurance coverage of granular type drugs, doc tors, even though they long for granular type drugs to be accepted as insurance drugs, are worrying whether t he number of outpatients might dwindle due to increased insurance co-payments. They also point out that the b iggest obstacles in the expansion of the granular type drugs as insurance drugs are the lack of understanding of the government and the objection of the Health Insurance Review and Assesment service (HIRA) for fe ar of increased insurance claims. 3. Upon investigation on Oriental medicine doctors' understandi ngs of herbal pharmaceutical industry, it is found that doctors' responses on pharmaceutical industry are no t all positive ones('new product development and neglect of R&D infrastructure' and 'smallness of industry'). Wh en it is investigated what area needs the greatest improvement in herbal pharmaceutical industry, 'securing sufficient capital, good manufacturing, and strengthening quality control', is the highest. 4. When it is asked what are the most needed in order to improve herbal health insurance medicine, responses such as 'the increase in the accessibility to and the utilizati on of Oriental medical clinics through the diversification of the means of prescriptions', 'the improvement of insurance benefits(cap adjustments)', 'increase the proportion of high quality medicinal plants', 'the ceiling of co-payments(deductible) at 20,000 won or more', 'expansion of the choices of formulations', 'formulational expa nsions of tablets and pills', and finally 'admittance and expansion of granular type drug as insurance drug' are the highest. 5. Upon investigating the general characteristics of the curren t status of the usage of Oriental health care herbal drugs, the followings are observed. First, the frequency of use of health insurance drugs by the doctors who use health insurance with general characteristics shows sim ilar differences in case of total monthly sales amount (p<0.001), average number of daily patients (p<0.05). Se condly, as to the willingness of the expanded usage of insurance drugs, similar differences are observed in c ase of total monthly sales amount (p<0.05).
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