A Study on the Characteristics of Korean Medicine Clinic Type through Latent Class Analysis

Objectives: The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic around the world has resulted in a decrease in the number of patients visiting medical centers due to concerns about infectious diseases, and the decrease in sales of Korean medicine clinics has been reported to be the highest among the medical fields. This study aims to identify the types of Korean medicine clinics according to the main characteristics of their management using latent class analysis.Methods: In order to distinguish the types of Korean medicine clinics and to find out the characteristics of each type, a latent class analysis was conducted on 1648 Korean medicine clinics that participated in the 2023 Korean Medicine Consumption Survey. Descriptive analysis was conducted for institutional characteristics, herbal medicine consumption patterns, and representative perception variables by type of Korean Medicine Clinic. Descriptive analyses were performed using the Analysis of Variance for continuous variables and the Chi-Square Test for nominal variables. All analyses were conducted using Stata and hypothesis tests were conducted at a significance level of 0.05.Results: The types of Korean medicine clinics were categorized into three groups: ‘non-urban general Korean medicine clinics’, ‘urban general Korean medicine clinics’, and ‘Korean medicine clinics that prefer shared Herbal Medicine Dispensary’. The most common type of acupuncture clinic was at ‘urban general acupuncture clinic’ (47.80%), followed by ‘non-urban general acupuncture clinic (45.10%)’ and ‘acupuncture clinic with shared herbal medicine dispensary (7.10%)’. In terms of sales, ‘Korean medicine clinics with shared herbal medicine dispensary’ were 1.76 times more than ‘urban general Korean medicine clinics’ and 1.49 times more than ‘non-urban general Korean medicine clinics’, while ‘Korean medicine clinics with a shared herbal medicine dispensary prescribed more than twice as many herbal medicines and herbal supplements as other types. Although the shared herbal medicine dispensary preference’ clinics were less likely to be aware of the off-site herbal medicine dispensary certification system, they were the most likely to recognize the importance of certification when choosing a shared herbal medicine dispensary and were also likely to use a granted authorized herbal medicine dispensary.Conclusion: This study categorized the types of Korean medicine clinics and examined their characteristics. These findings provide a cross-section of the management characteristics of Korean medicine clinics, and can be useful for future basic research on the relationship between Korean medicine clinic characteristics and management performance, and can be used as a reference for Korean medicine clinic management.