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This photo shows a patient carried by medical workers on a stretcher at Seoul National University's teaching hospital in Seoul on Tuesday. (Yonhap) |
President Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday laid out a plan to raise physicians' fees temporarily during the next two weeks, as the crisis in short-staffed emergency rooms in South Korean hospitals is expected to deepen during the Chuseok holiday in mid-September.
Yoon said in a Cabinet meeting that fees for emergency room doctors -- supported by the nation's universal single-payer health care system -- will be temporarily raised 3.5 times what they currently are during the period.
The hikes will be effective from Wednesday Sept. 11 until Sept. 25, as Yoon announced Tuesday that South Korea will introduce a nationwide alert on emergency room operations during the two weeks including the Chuseok holiday period to ensure patients' access to emergency medical services. According to Seoul, the government has allocated 28.5 billion won ($21.2 million) to make up for the cost of emergency room operations, including the temporary fee hikes, during this two-week period.
"The government has decided temporarily to significantly increase health insurance fees, such as consultation fees and prescription issuance fees, from the period before to the period after the Chuseok holiday to somehow repay medical professionals for their dedication," Yoon told the Cabinet members.
Yoon also said "a much greater number of" hospitals voluntarily offered to provide emergency medical services during the alert period as "medical institutions on duty" under the Emergency Medical Services Act.
On Monday, the government estimated that over 7,900 institutions will tentatively be operational on average daily as medical institutions on duty during the Chuseok holiday period -- one of Korea's two main traditional holidays -- from Saturday until Sept. 18. The figure is up twofold compared to the Lunar New Year holiday period in February.
Moreover, 518 emergency centers and facilities combined, or more than 99 percent of all such centers and facilities, will be operational throughout the holiday, according to the government.
Yoon also pledged to go ahead with his plan to deploy military doctors, public health doctors and physician's assistants to emergency rooms to mitigate the pressure on existing strained medical workers.
Later on Tuesday, Jung Yoon-soon, a senior official of the Health Ministry, said in a daily briefing that the government will allocate the contingency state budget enough to add 400 health care workers nationwide for the next two weeks. Yoon's spokesperson Jeong Hey-jeon noted that Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok revealed his plan to inject 3.7 billion won for additional emergency room health care workers at the Cabinet meeting.
Concerns about a medical crisis have mounted, as already-overcrowded emergency rooms here are increasingly plagued by medical workers' exhaustion coupled with the mass resignations of some 10,000 interns and residents nationwide since February to protest Yoon's plan to hike the medical school admissions quota by 2,000 places.
According to the office of medical and public health expert-turned-lawmaker Rep. Kim Sun-min of the Rebuilding Korea Party, the number of messages alerting the public of emergency medical service restrictions from February to August rose 23 percent compared to the same period the previous year.
Meanwhile, the Yoon administration has laid out plans to increase the wage of physicians in essential health care sectors.
In August, the Health Ministry rolled out plans to inject a state budget of 10 trillion won ($7.4 billion) to 2028 to offer higher rewards for physicians dedicated to the essential health care sector via the universal public health insurance, without necessarily raising the premium.
It also said a budget of some 1.2 trillion won had already been spent to boost rewards for essential care workers since January.
On the other hand, the mandatory contribution rate to the state-run National Health Insurance Service -- which pools contributions to pay doctors -- will remain frozen in 2025, according to the government, given that reserves in the national health insurance fund came to 27 trillion won as of the end of July.
