This dissertation explains the policy case of the separation of dispensary from medical practices with the framework of complexity theory that emphasizes such key notions as chaos, disorder, non-equilibrium, non-linearity, and wholeness. Important co...
This dissertation explains the policy case of the separation of dispensary from medical practices with the framework of complexity theory that emphasizes such key notions as chaos, disorder, non-equilibrium, non-linearity, and wholeness. Important conceptual features of a complex adaptive system (i.e., self-organization, path-dependence, sensitivity to initial conditions, co-evolution, and emergence) are applied to the case analysis of the medical-dispensary separation policy.
This study concludes that the separation policy was emerged in the self-organized process where the medical-dispensary policy system, an organic network consisting of numerous actors, co-evolves and interacts in various ways with external environments and other complex systems.
Firstly, the emergence of the separation policy occurred in the self-organization process that maintains structural integration by a self-generated order of medical-dispensary separation. In a long-term horizon, the new separation-centered order was created by an incremental process in which the past autogeneous non-separation system that was indeed structurally integrative has gradually moved to non-equilibrium status via intra- and extra-system fluctuations such as dramatic changes in political environments (e.g., 5/16 military coup d'état and the inauguration of Kim Daejoong Administration), the start of medical insurance system, and oriental medicine strife.
Second, there has been the strong path-dependence of medical-dispensary non-separation transmitted from in social genes ingrained in oriental medical tradition and the public's long familiarity with integrated services. The path-dependence characterized as both Korean tradition and public convention of non-separation has continuously blocked the medical-dispensary separation policy. Another component causing the path-dependence upon non-separation was the committee system that had existed as a kind of standard operation procedure (SOP) despite the fact that the committee failed in resolving medical-dispensary strife.
Third, participation of civic groups in the policy-making process showed active feedback in interaction with other groups and policy institutions to the extent to which it had a great influence on policy-making system and the degree of policy problem complexity. The unexpected and unintended consequence of this feedback arose from sensitivity to initial conditions.
Fourth, co-evolutionary characteristic described both the process that health insurance system and medical-dispensary policy mutually affects and the process that this mutual influences were fed back to political, economical, social, cultural, and health-medical environments. The health insurance system excludes dispensary services from that insurance policy so that the unbalance between medical interests and dispensary ones let Korean Pharmaceutical Association and governmental authority drive the separation policy. Furthermore, the health insurance system served as a factor to constrain the medical-dispensary separation policy because it always had a higher policy priority than the separation policy. The separation policy breakdown due to the conflict among interest groups was fed back to the health insurance system by dampening the expansion of regional medical insurance or by contributing to the promotion of dispensary health insurance.
The enforcement of health insurance system catalyzed fragmentation of medical groups. Between-group heterogeneity and conflicts led to active participation of fragmented groups in decision-making processes. The serious confrontation among medical interest groups resulted in the 2000 decision less advantageous for medical society than for dispensary one. However, between-group conflicts in collective action processes such as a general strike of the entire medical society increased the number of demanded suggestions and make decision-making procedure complicated; resultingly, the separation policy was amended more favorably for the medical society. The excessive hike in medical fees that was set in the policy correction process was later fed back to health insurance system and medical-dispensary separation, and brought about unintended problems like financial troubles and the increase of total medical charges.
Conclusively, the current version of medical-dispensary separation policy has matured conditions for its implementation in the long-term interaction process of the policy system with political, economic, social, cultural, and health-medical environments (i.e., social factors such as democratization of political system, economic growth, rich-and-poor gap, traditional factors such as oriental medical heritage and non-separation convention, gradual increase in the number of medical doctors, organizations, and pharmacists, the removal of no medical practitioner, the implementation of health insurance system, and oriental medicine strife etc.). And in a short-term horizon, the initiation of the medical-dispensary separation policy has displayed the new emergence in the overall level of health-medical system via the process by which the policy system interacts with a serial of events such as the inauguration of Kim Daejoong Administration, political democratization, participation of civic groups, redemption system in real transaction price, conflicts among groups within medical society, and a general strike of medical society.
Characterized by these features as complex adaptive system, the dynamic change of the medical-dispensary separation policy was similar to the evolution through continuous interaction of an organism with environment. The evolutionary process of the medical-dispensary separation policy can never be satisfactorily explained by substantial or procedural rationality as traditional concepts of rationality.
Evolutionary rationality suggested in this dissertation is assumed to follow through co-evolutionary process as if a biological organism does. Evolution means self-generated change by going through mutual adaptation to environment without predetermined goals and given direction. Hence, evolutionary rationality does not presuppose a priori rational goals or causality beforehand; instead, it implies rationality as intelligence that is expanded through co-evolutionary process by temporary, partial, and regional mutual adaptation and selection between policy and a whole system. In this context, evolutionary rationality of policy refers to the process to improve rationality of policy by extending knowledge via trial-and-errors and learning by experiences.
In the viewpoint of evolutionary rationality, policy can be improved when partial changes are facilitated but that of a whole is evolutionary. For better evolution, it is crucial to accept and enhance diversity of species, flexibility, variability, and integratibility between heterogeneous elements. Regional experiment is a useful way to better a policy by stimulating partial changes.
Even under the reality of complexity, government agencies and policy-related groups would try to make a limited albeit rational decision. The notion of evolutionary rationality is helpful for ultimately rational decision-making of a government. The government will better manage national policies by the guarantee of specific diversity, the incremental increase in local social experimentation, the accumulation of experiences through policy successes and fiascoes, knowledge expansion and innovation diffusion by imitation and learning effect, and the collection of partial and regional rationality that helps minimize social costs in the advent of unanticipated spillover effects