Current trends in domestic status and insurance policy for use of plasma

which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Plasma components, such as fresh frozen plasma (FFP), fresh plasma, frozen plasma, and cryoprecipitates, are commonly used for the correction of bleeding due to the deficiency of blood coagulation factors. Furthermore, blood coagulation factors and plasma proteins are components of plasma that enable the manufacture of plasma derivatives, including factor VIII concentrates, factor IX concentrates, im-munoglobulin, and albumin. In this paper, we discuss the current domestic status of plasma use and the related insurance policy of the Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service (HIRA), which ensures health insurance for the entire South Korean nation. This in turn will aid in developing a proposal for the proper use of plasma components. The transfusion of plasma components in Korea began in earnest in the 1990s, with the establishment of blood component therapy as an alternative to whole blood therapy. In 2009, a total of 658,069 units of plasma were supplied from the Korean Red Cross Blood Center (KRCBC), which mainly comprised FFP (92.7%), cryoprecipitates (7.3%), and frozen plasma (0.1%). The KRCBC provides approximately 97% of all the blood components used in Korea. According to the Annals of Statistics from KRCBC, the total plasma supply Among blood components , lesser amounts of plasma are supplied compared with red blood cells (RBC) and platelets. In Korea, plasma accounts for less than 20% of all blood components supplied, and the proportion of plasma supplied has steadily decreased from 2003 (19.3%) to 2009 (15.9%) (Fig. 1). Despite using 98% of total plasma components, the total amount of claims to HIRA from tertiary and general hospitals for plasma accounts for approximately 75% of the total plasma supply of KRCBC. Although the proportion of the amount of claims for plasma components to the supply of plasma has gradually increased over time, the remaining 25% might be claimed mostly by automobile insurance and industrial accident insurance, or, in a small proportion of cases, is directly paid for by the patients without filing for claims to HIRA. As a regional emergency medical center of southern Gyeonggi-do, Ajou University Hospital filed for claims to automobile insurance or industrial accident insurance companies for 22.4% of the total plasma units used in 2009. According to the Annals of Statistics from HIRA, although the amount of plasma used has shown an annual variation, tertiary hospitals have …