title: Poverty in the midst of plenty: unmet needs and distribution of health care resources in South Korea.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The unmet needs for health care have been used as an alternative measurement to monitor equity in health services. We sought to examine contextual influences on unmet needs for health care whereas precedent studies have been focused on individual characteristics on them.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The current study conducted multilevel logistic regression analysis to assess the effects of individual- and contextual-level predictors in meeting individual health care needs in South Korea. We sampled 7,200 individuals over the age of 19 in the Fourth Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey in 2009. Included in the regression model were individual predictors such as demographic variables, socio-economic status, and self-rated health; the density of beds and physicians in public and private sectors within different regions were used as contextual-level predictors. This study showed the inverse association between unmet needs and regional resources in private sectors after controlling for the effects of individual-level predictors.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our findings suggest that increasing regional resources in private sectors might produce inefficiency in the health care system and inequity in access to health services, particularly where the competition in private health care sectors was highly stimulated under the fee-for-service reimbursement scheme. Policies for the reallocation of health care resources and for reduction of individual health care costs are needed in Korea.
authors.affiliation: Public Health Joint Doctoral Program, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA. jjongho77@gmail.com
authors.forename: Jongho
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Heo
authors.forename: Juwhan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Oh
authors.forename: Jukyung
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Manwoo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Jin-seok
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Soonman
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kwon
authors.forename: S V
authors.initials: SV
authors.lastname: Subramanian
authors.forename: Ichiro
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Kawachi
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000191:economics*; D006295:Health Resources / Q000191:economics* / Q000600:supply & distribution*; D006301:Health Services Needs and Demand / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006742:Hospital Bed Capacity / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D016015:Logistic Models; D055361:Multilevel Analysis; D011203:Poverty / Q000191:economics*; D015995:Prevalence; D056910:Republic of Korea / Q000453:epidemiology