Quality of care in the Korean health system

This chapter provides an overview of policies and strategies to improve the quality of care in the Korean health system. It seeks to describe key quality of care policies and benchmark the extent to which Korea has deployed various policies that are commonly used across OECD countries to assure the delivery of high quality health care. In doing so, it is broadly based on a framework that categorises policies according to those that are system wide, which assure inputs into health care, which monitor the quality of services delivered and which promote continuing improvements in quality. As a health care system characterised by a heavy reliance on private provision of services and a significant acute care sector, quality of care policies in Korea are more often driven by pockets of motivated individuals or institutions. Efforts to build in system-wide policies are often still under development, and in some cases could benefit from additional support or regulation to encourage their adoption.