South Korea Adds Funds for Emergency Care Staff During Walkout

Shinhye Kang and Jenny Lee
·3 min read

(Bloomberg) -- South Korea will increase compensation for hospitals that kept emergency rooms running during a staff crunch caused by a doctors’ walkout and is advancing a plan to boost medical school enrollments, which sparked the labor action.

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President Yoon Suk Yeol’s administration is looking to increase fees for emergency room visits and some complex surgeries, which it sees as being set too low, to help pay for staffing costs, a senior official said at a government meeting Thursday.

“Collective action by trainee doctors has continued for more than 15 days,” said Lee Han-kyung, head of the Disaster Safety Management Office of the Ministry of the Interior and Safety. “Cases of damage are also occurring. However, the emergency medical care system is still being maintained without major disruptions.”

The Heath and Welfare Ministry said the government will inject 188.2 billion won ($141.5 million) a month into national health insurance finances to increase compensation during the walkout for doctors at emergency centers and those who look after patients in intensive care units.

Yoon’s government has said it will not budge on its plan to increase to annual enrollment at medical schools by 2,000 from the current 3,058 to alleviate a doctor shortage that ranks among the most acute the developed world. It argues the number has not risen for nearly three decades and needs to increase to help the country cope with the medical needs of a rapidly aging population.

It has also started to put together a committee to allocate the seats at medical schools across the country from the next academic year, Yonhap News reported government officials as saying.

About 9,000 of the country’s 13,000 trainee doctors, who are similar to medical residents, have defied a government’s deadline to return to work by the start of March, according to Yonhap. The walkout has led to about a 50% reduction in surgeries and decreased staffing levels at emergency rooms, the government said.

The doctors contend the plan to increase enrollments won’t fix fundamental problems such as a concentration of doctors in urban areas and a lack of specialists in fields seen as risky and lower paying. They want to see changes to the malpractice system that give more protection to physicians.

Yoon’s government has threatened to revoke the licenses of doctors for leading a labor action it says violates medical laws. It is also looking at suspending the licenses of thousands of trainee doctors for three months for defying the return-to-work order, a move that could set them back on their career paths and affect employment prospects.

The president said at a cabinet meeting Wednesday the country would mobilize all necessary resources to prevent any gaps in medical care, allocating 128.5 billion won for measures such as providing support for patient transfers and hiring more staff at health-care providers.

To cope with the staff shortage, the country has opened emergency rooms at its military hospitals to civilians and allowed telemedicine nationwide. Nurses have been authorized to perform CPR and dispense medication at emergency rooms from Friday, Yonhap said.

Polling indicates the public is siding with the government, seeing the reform as a way to cut waiting times for health care. South Korean doctors rank among the best paid among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries in comparison to average wages, which has led to criticism the labor action may be more about protecting the earning power of physicians rather than improving the health-care system.

--With assistance from Seyoon Kim.

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