The occupational health agency system, which was established for the purpose of providing efficient health services with limited resources to the employees of small and medium enterprises, is a traveling group health service system. Though the occupat...
The occupational health agency system, which was established for the purpose of providing efficient health services with limited resources to the employees of small and medium enterprises, is a traveling group health service system. Though the occupational health agencies have increased in numbers, which is 66 in total in 1998, after the introduction of the occupational health agency system, there have not been proper evaluations and improvements in the system.
The purpose of this study is to conduct the evaluation of the occupational health agencies, and to provide suggestions for improvement thereof. Specifically, it attempts (1) to identify the factors related to the perceptions and attitudes of in-house health personnel of small and medium manufacturing firms in Shinpyung-Changrim industrial complex of Pusan regarding occupational health agency system, (2) to examine the actual conditions of occupational health agency services provided by the nurses of the agencies, (3) to identify the problems associated with the occupational health agency system on the basis of the survey results, and (4) to suggest the alternatives to improve the quality of the services.
This study used questionnaire method in order to collect the data. The sample occupational health agencies evaluated in this study are 12 institutions in Pusan-Kyungnam region. The main results of the study are as follows:
(1) There were weaknesses in service in the areas of approachability, comprehensiveness, technical quality, participation of workers and management, and adequacy of service. The problems in the areas other than approachability were found to be structural, while the latter ones were the problems which occurred during service implementation processes.
(2) While the quality of occupational health agency service in general was rather low, there were some variations in the level of service quality according to the institutions.
On the basis of the above results, the sugestions for improvement and limitations of the study are discussed in the conclusion.