Factors Related to the Unmet Health Care Needs of Adults in Korea : Using the 7th Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination

It has been 30 years since the nation's health insurance system was settled for the entire nation. Medical accessibility, coverage and health-related indicators of Korea have improved significantly since the health insurance system was implemented. Nevertheless, There are some shortages compared to OECD countries, high experience rate of disastrous medical expenses and self-burden rate. Among those shortages, unmet health care needs have been studied by various researchers and institutions at domestic and abroad because it suggests a blind spot in health care policy. In the case of prior research in Korea, studies related to the experience of unmet health care needs were conducted in various ways, including various public/panel data, but relatively small amount of research has been studied about reasons for unmet health care needs. Thus, this study was intended to address two areas of research, including not only the experience status of unmet health care needs, but also the related reasons. The 7th Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey during 2016 and 2017 were used as a source of data for this study. A total of 10,827 adults aged 19 or older were analyzed. After analyzing whether or not there is a experience of unmet health care needs, 1,055 people who responded that they had a experience of unmet health care needs were extracted when performing the analysis for the relevant reasons. The experience of unmet health care needs and the reason for the unmet health care needs were selected as dependent variables, and the 20 independent variables were divided into demographic, socio-Financial, health behaviors and health status elements to perform binary logistic analysis and multinomial logistic analysis. The results showed that factors related to unmet health care needs experience were related to the demographic factors, socio-Financial factors, health behavioral factors, and health status factors. To elaborate on the unmet health care needs, the reasons were classified into three categories: other reasons including minor symptoms, time reasons, and Financial reasons. Factors related to reasons about unmet health care needs were all related to population factors, socioFinancial factors, health behavior factors, and health status factors. This study was able to identify the current state of affairs in that it analyzed not only the experiences of unmet health care needs among Korean adults, but also the reasons related to the research. In addition, it is meaningful to know that even the same factors have different effects depending on the reason for unmet health care needs.open석