To evaluate the sensitivity and specificity of Community Health Survey (CHS), we analyzed data from 11,217 participants aged ≥ 19 yr, in 13 cities and counties in 2008. Three healthcare utilization indices (admission, outpatient visits, dental visits) as comparative variables and the insurance benefit claim data of the Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service as the gold-standard were used. The sensitivities of admission, outpatient visits, and dental visits in CHS were 54.8%, 52.1%, and 61.0%, respectively. The specificities were 96.4%, 85.6%, and 82.7%, respectively. This is the first study to evaluate the validity of nationwide health statistics resulting from questionnaire surveys and shows that CHS needs a lot of efforts to reflect the true health status, health behavior, and healthcare utilization of the population.

Purpose: To examine the degree of recognition regarding the concept of patient safety, as perceived by the patient, using a focus group discussion.Methods: A focus group discussion was conducted with a patient group comprising seven patients.Results: When the participants heard the term “patient safety” they seemed to understand it to be related to the hospital environment or satisfaction with the overall hospitalization experience. The participants emphasized communication between the medical staff and the patients in relation to the explanation of treatments, as well as the provision of information regarding prevention, experience, and the treatment of incidents with patient safety. They agreed on the need for indicators reported by patients. However, they emphasized that additional items and a questionnaire method that considers the patients' point of view are needed.Conclusion: It is necessary to establish and implement various strategies that can raise the awareness of patient safety using patient safety indicators and increase participation in patient safety activities.

The Korean government initiated a plan to designate and establish Regional Trauma Centers to reduce the preventable trauma death rate to <20% so as to be on par with advanced countries by 2020. This initiative was undertaken because the reported preventable trauma death rate was close to 40% in South Korea from 1997 to 2009. This review aimed to provide an overview of these Regional Trauma Centers and discuss further development of the trauma care system to assess its performance. As of September 2021, 15 Regional Trauma Centers had been established through a metropolitan-based designation process. Each center has been equipped with Level-I facilities. These Regional Trauma Centers have had 2 positive effects; namely, an increase in the number of severely injured patients attending these centers and a decrease in the national preventable trauma death rate from 30.5% in 2015 to 19.9% in 2017. The establishment of Regional Trauma Centers can lead to improved performance, maximal efficiency, and reduction of preventable deaths in trauma patients. They can also play a key role in prehospital triage and transportation in the trauma care system.

Purpose: The development and collection of safety indicators directly reported by patients without interpretation by a third party is an essential element of realizing patient-centered care. We examined whether Patient-Reported Incidence Measures (PRIMs) could be applied in the Republic of Korea.Methods: A draft set of 23 items was identified by reviewing 28 PRIMs developed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. A Delphi survey was conducted among 9 experts in the field of patient safety. The experts evaluated the content validity of the 28 items; thereafter, 18 items were selected and divided into three categories: incident prevention, patient-reported incidents, and incident management. A pilot survey was conducted on 169 patients to examine the applicability of PRIMs.Results: The Delphi survey revealed that the item with the highest content validity was whether or not to confirm the patient's identity. The pilot survey revealed that, among the items regarding incident prevention, the experience of patient identification was high (96.4%), but that of medical staff washing hands before treatment was low (68.0%). Among the items regarding incident management, the highest response was that they had a satisfactory experience in handling treatment-related requirements (74.6%), but 33.1% answered that it was not easy to communicate with medical staff when treatment-related requests occurred.Conclusion: Although there were some differences between the perspectives of providers and patients, PRIMs in the Republic of Korea were found to be applicable.