07-07-2023, 08:05 AM
By Eunwoo Lee
June 08, 2023
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Going to the hospital ...... hours of waiting for a few minutes of facetime. For context, there are 2.5 physicians per 1,000 people in South Korea – far below the OECD average of 3.7. In that mix are those practicing Korean medicine, trained to administer acupuncture and esoteric concoctions. Cross them out, and the figure dips to 2. On an ordinary day, one Korean physician deals with 58 patients.
Yet the annual number of newly licensed physicians has remained the same for almost two decades, because college spots for medical degrees are capped at around 3,000. Former President Moon Jae-in tried and failed to ratchet it up by 400 back in 2020. In protest of the proposal, doctors went on strikes – in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Korea Medical Association (KMA), a trade union for doctors, has resisted calls for an increased supply of white gowns and other health reforms deemed as hurting their interests.
Their logic is rather straightforward and transparent: strangle the supply of their services to jack up their compensation. An average Korean physician earns approximately US$177,000 a year, almost twice as much as the OECD average. Hospitals in remote areas even offer physicians they need up to US$700,000 a year. Doctors are in such short supply that it’s common for nurses to cover for them by drafting prescriptions and conducting minor surgeries, all of which only doctors are authorized to do.
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a series of mishaps for the past few months has galvanized the public and brought the issue back into the limelight. Last August, a nurse on duty collapsed from a brain hemorrhage. At her work, however, there were no doctors who could operate on her, so she was transferred to a different hospital where she died.
......
in March, a teenager fell from a building. A string of hospitals shooed her ambulance away, saying they were glutted with patients and surgeons were unavailable. She died in the roaming ambulance.
In May, a feverish five-year-old couldn’t receive timely treatment due to a lack of pediatricians in the first four hospitals the ambulance contacted. The child died a few days later. The same month, a septuagenarian run over by a car died in an ambulance after two hours of hospital-hopping. Ten hospitals rejected him.
......
From 2018 to 2022, there were some 37,000 cases in which hospitals turned away ambulances. One-third of those rejections were caused by the lack of relevant physicians. On average, only half of critically ill patients receive timely care. In particular, around 40 percent of those struck with cerebral infarction – where every second counts – fail to procure immediate care from the first hospital they reach.
......
The overall shortage of physicians is mostly to blame. Adding to the crisis, of the few doctors there are, many opt to open private practices in the most lucrative fields such as dermatology, plastic surgery, and ophthalmology. More than 80 percent of surgeons once slated for work in major hospitals are now running their own practices to treat largely cosmetic ailments unrelated to their specialties.
Better to read full article at: https://thediplomat.com/2023/06/south-ko...-a-crisis/
June 08, 2023
......
Going to the hospital ...... hours of waiting for a few minutes of facetime. For context, there are 2.5 physicians per 1,000 people in South Korea – far below the OECD average of 3.7. In that mix are those practicing Korean medicine, trained to administer acupuncture and esoteric concoctions. Cross them out, and the figure dips to 2. On an ordinary day, one Korean physician deals with 58 patients.
Yet the annual number of newly licensed physicians has remained the same for almost two decades, because college spots for medical degrees are capped at around 3,000. Former President Moon Jae-in tried and failed to ratchet it up by 400 back in 2020. In protest of the proposal, doctors went on strikes – in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Korea Medical Association (KMA), a trade union for doctors, has resisted calls for an increased supply of white gowns and other health reforms deemed as hurting their interests.
Their logic is rather straightforward and transparent: strangle the supply of their services to jack up their compensation. An average Korean physician earns approximately US$177,000 a year, almost twice as much as the OECD average. Hospitals in remote areas even offer physicians they need up to US$700,000 a year. Doctors are in such short supply that it’s common for nurses to cover for them by drafting prescriptions and conducting minor surgeries, all of which only doctors are authorized to do.
......
a series of mishaps for the past few months has galvanized the public and brought the issue back into the limelight. Last August, a nurse on duty collapsed from a brain hemorrhage. At her work, however, there were no doctors who could operate on her, so she was transferred to a different hospital where she died.
......
in March, a teenager fell from a building. A string of hospitals shooed her ambulance away, saying they were glutted with patients and surgeons were unavailable. She died in the roaming ambulance.
In May, a feverish five-year-old couldn’t receive timely treatment due to a lack of pediatricians in the first four hospitals the ambulance contacted. The child died a few days later. The same month, a septuagenarian run over by a car died in an ambulance after two hours of hospital-hopping. Ten hospitals rejected him.
......
From 2018 to 2022, there were some 37,000 cases in which hospitals turned away ambulances. One-third of those rejections were caused by the lack of relevant physicians. On average, only half of critically ill patients receive timely care. In particular, around 40 percent of those struck with cerebral infarction – where every second counts – fail to procure immediate care from the first hospital they reach.
......
The overall shortage of physicians is mostly to blame. Adding to the crisis, of the few doctors there are, many opt to open private practices in the most lucrative fields such as dermatology, plastic surgery, and ophthalmology. More than 80 percent of surgeons once slated for work in major hospitals are now running their own practices to treat largely cosmetic ailments unrelated to their specialties.
Better to read full article at: https://thediplomat.com/2023/06/south-ko...-a-crisis/