In Korea, there is no well organized health care delivey system yet.
Therefore, Korean government has tried to develop well organized and also feasible health care delivery system since last several years.
In this current situation, family medicine has been introduced since 1979, which everybody thinks this will be very helpful in reorganizing health care delivery system.
In health care delivery system, referral is very important matter between specialties and also between family physician and consultant physician.
Therefore, it is very important to know the referral rate from family physician to consultant physician.
To know the baseline data on referral from family physician to consultant physician, this research has been carried out.
The results of this research were as follows.
1. Total number of patients was 1,247. If we classify the 1,247 patients into currently existing specalties internal medicine was 51%, pediatrics was 24%, surgery was 10%, respectively.
2. Total number of referred patients was 28 and the rate was 2.25%.
3. Classfying the 1,247 patients by currently existing specialties and from each group, the referral rate was calculated.
In internal medicine, the rate was 1.5%, in surgery, the rate was 4.3%, in pediatrics, the rate was 0.3% respectively.
However, in orthopedics the rate was 15.8%.
4. Among 28 patients who were referred, the reasons of referral showed that better care was 12 patients, diagnosis and management was 7, patient request was 1, respectivey.

This study was investigated the Family APGAR Scores which was introduced in 1978 as a utilitarian screening instrument for family function by Dr. Smilkstein. The Family APGAR Index Questionnaire consisted of five items : adaptation, partnership, growth, affection and resolve. The Index Score is ranged from 0 to 10 and is divided into three groups; severly dysfunctional 0-3, moderately dysfunctional 4-6, and highly functional 7-10, for evaluating the family function.
For this study, 466 high school students were chosen and were divided into two groups; Three-choice response format group (Group I) and five-choice response format group (Grup Ⅱ). For comparison, 200 reformatory students whose age were similar to the Group I were selected. The retest was carried out after an interval of two weeks to Group I.
The results of this study are as follows.
1. In Group I, the mean Family APGAR Score is 5.45±2.17. The range of inter-item correlations are 0.18-0.34 and item to total correlations are 0.55-0.63.
2. In Group I, 31.4% belongs to highly functional families, 48.3% moderately dysfunctional families and 20.3% severely dysfunctional families by Smilksteins'classification.
3. The three-choice response format results in good scale qualities and is simpler although five-choice response format yields some improvement in psychometric qualities of the instrument.
4. The difference in Family APGAR Scores between high school students group and reformatory students group is statistically significant(P<0.01).
5. The coefficiency of test-retest reliability after and interval of two weeks is 0.3225, which is statistically significant(P<0.001).
As a result, this study suggested the possibility that the Family APGAR Scores could be applied to the Korean for evaluating family function.