Health financing strategies contribute significantly to containing the outbreak of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). This study aims to reassess Korea’s financing strategies in response to COVID-19 in 2020, to ascertain its effects and sustainability. The Joint External Evaluation tool was adopted to analyze the data collected from government reports, official statistics, and other sources. Findings show that Korea could maintain a low incidence and fatality rate compared with other countries, at low costs. It was a result of rapidly procured healthcare resources based on laws and policies established after the 2015 epidemic, and the National Health Insurance. However, to achieve long-term sustainability, it is important to enhance the financial stability of the national health insurance and increase the proportion of the public sector in healthcare resources.

The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on the continuity of care (COC) for patients with hypertension. Additionally, the factor of whether participants were treated via telemedicine was also considered. This study used the National Health Insurance and Medical Aid claims data of the Republic of Korea between 2019 and 2020. Multivariable regression analysis was performed to identify the differences in the number of visits and the most frequent provider continuity (MFPC) of hypertensive patients before and after the appearance of COVID-19 in Korea. Additional analysis was performed with data that excluded cases of patients who received telemedicine services. A total of 5,791,812 hypertensive patients were included in this study. The MFPC decreased by 0.0031 points after the appearance of COVID-19, and it showed the same decrease even when telemedicine cases were excluded. The number of outpatient clinic visit days decreased by 0.2930 days after the appearance of COVID-19. Without the telemedicine cases, the number of outpatient clinic visit days decreased by 0.3330 days after the appearance of COVID-19. Accordingly, the COVID-19 protocols did not affect hypertension patients’ COC but impacted the frequency of their outpatient visits. In other words, with or without telemedicine, the utilization of healthcare was not disrupted, but there was a significant difference in the volume of healthcare use depending on the inclusion of telemedicine cases.

ObjectiveTo investigate the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on the continuity of care (COC) in hypertension patients. Additionally, the factor of whether participants were treated by telemedicine or not was also considered.MethodsNational Health Insurance and Medical Aid claims This study used data from the Republic of Korea between 2019 and 2020. The multiple regression analysis was performed to identify the differences in visits and the Most Frequent Provider Continuity (MFPC) of hypertensive patients before and after the COVID-19. To confirm the effect of telemedicine, additional analysis was performed with data that deleted cases that received telemedicine.FindingsA total of 5,791,812 hypertensive patients are included in this study. When the confounding variables were adjusted, the MFPC decreased by 0.0031 points after the COVID-19. It also showed the same results for MFPC when telemedicine cases were excluded. The number of outpatient clinic visit days decreased by 0.2930 days after the COVID-19. Without telemedicine cases, the number of outpatient clinic visit days decreased by 0.3330 days after the COVID-19.ConclusionThe COVID-19 protocols did not affect hypertension patients' COC but impacted their outpatient frequency. Additionally, when telemedicine cases are considered, COC was the same, but the patient’s outpatient frequency had decreased, but not as much as when telemedicine cases were considered.