SYSTEM OF RENDERING AND MECHANISM OF FINANCING OF MEDICAL SERVICES IN SOUTH KOREA
Purpose: health care is a significant social sphere, whose tasks are to ensure and maintain public health, as well as to promote the preservation and augmentation of labor potential and intellectual capital. Therefore, the quality of services provided by medical-prophylactic institutions (medical organizations) to the population is one of the most important evaluation and analytical categories. The authors of the article emphasize the problem of objectivity in assessing the quality of medical services, since most of the existing research in this area uses expert methods and questionnaire methods to determine the dynamics and structure of qualitative parameters of this type of socially significant service. The main objective of the study is to review and analyze the delivery system and the mechanism for financing medical services in South Korea. Materials and methods: as a general methodological basis of this article, methods of economic-statistical and content analysis of open data characterizing the dynamism of the development of the financing system for medical services in South Korea were used. Results: South Korea is one of the most intensively developing states actively integrating into the system of international relations. To ensure the appropriate level of production of goods and services, which in turn is an important basis for economic stability, the country needs a large number of workers, and therefore this Asian country has a significantly intensive work week: 6 days or more than 50 working hours. Nevertheless, according to the portal of The Global Economy, since 1965 the volume of the national labor resources of the Republic continues to decline rapidly: from 86.56% in 1965, 55.69% on average, with a minimum value of 36.96% in 2013. This is due to the fact that the coefficient of total fertility has significantly decreased, and the country is faced with the problem of intensive aging of society. In this regard, particular interest is the study of the system of medical services, the conditions for their provision and the funding mechanism in South Korea. Conclusions: at present, the study of the system of rendering medical services, the conditions for their provision and the financing mechanism in South Korea is of particular interest. In view of the fact that experience in this field can become an important source of improving the health care system not only in Russia, but also in some European countries. In the course of the work excerpts from an interview with a resident of the Republic of Korea are translated into Russian.