OBJECTIVES: In Korea, medical material has a separate reimbursement list. Recently, the cost for medical material has been increased and rate of rising is exceeded the whole cost in NHI. This study was to perform analysis of utilization patterns of medical material and draw policy implications. METHODS: Korea Health Insurance claim data was employed for analyzing the cost and volume. Medical service organization characteristics were considered in the analysis. RESULTS: Among the total health care expenditure of the NHI, 3.37% and 4.27% were used for medical material reimbursement respectively in 2005 and 2006. In March 2007, 11,951 items were on the reimbursement list and 11.3% increase in the number of items on the list comparing to prior year. 10,664(89.2%) items were under co-payment and 913 were not covered in NHI. In 2005, 5.9%(about 59 million in US dollars) was paid for Drug Eluting coronary Stent (DES), 4.21%(about 42 million in US dollars) for spinal fusion and 3.60%(about 36 million in US dollars) for PCTA catheter of the total medical material reimbursed cost. General hospitals used about 60% of whole medical material expenditure and service organizations in metropolitan used about 62.5%. In expenditure amount of medical material reimbursement for inpatient care was higher than for outpatient care, while in volume for outpatient care was slightly higher than for inpatient care. In internal medicine, orthopedics, neurosurgery, the majority of medical materials were used. The average expenditure per case was highest in internal medicine. CONCLUSIONS: A few Korean studies that were related with medical material have been published comparing with developed countries. Expenditure for medical materials is smaller than for pharmaceuticals in NHI expenditure. But the number of medical material items on the reimbursement list will be growing up because of rapid technology development. Monitoring for medical material utilization patterns should be systemized.