An analysis of opinion polls for family medicine specialists on the implementation of family doctor registration system in Korea

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Since the Independence in 1945, the Republic of Korea (ROK) has maintained fundamentally the liberal health care system by the influence of U.S.A. Therefore, as in the case of U.S.A., the primary health care system of ROK has fallen in the chaos. Recently, the new government of ROK seems to retry the introduction of 'Family Doctor Registration System (FDRS)' in spite of the 1996's failure. In order to conduct FDRS efficiently, there should be a thorough investigation on the opinions of doctors and people in the community. This study was conducted with a view to collecting necessary information regarding the implementation of FDRS. METHODS: By mailing, the self-administered questionnaires were collected twice during March 18 to May 12 in 1998. The questionnaire had been prepared through several discussions, pretest, and final correction by five family physicians and two health care policy professors. The subjects consisted of 2,093 family physicians. RESULTS: Though the overall response rate was only 28.2% (591) subjects, age distribution for the study subjects was similar to that of average family physicians. The subjects consisted of 451 males and 138 females. The number of those whose age was less than 40 was 49.9% (195). "The group that agrees with the introduction of FDRS" was 58.5% of all respondents; "the group that objects 14.4%; and the group undetermined" 24.7%. The 73.6% of all respondents had negative opinion on increased administrative work. Only 21.3% expected their net income to increase. On multiple logistic regression analysis, relatively large city rather than metropolitan Seoul, the smaller number of visiting patients a month, regular resident training experience, and male sex resulted in having a significant positive relationship with the introduction of FDRS. Further analyses are called for to identify differences of opinions between family physicians and single specialty medical practitioners. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this survey should be reflected into the health care policy when retrying to implement FDRS in Korea.