Yoon Seok-yeol's 'bait strategy' of accepting patients in 17 regions fails, 'emergency medical care becomes a national system'
As the Yoon Seok-yeol administration fails to change the medical system centered on university hospitals to a 'bait strategy' of accepting patients in 17 regions and 136 regional emergency centers, the 'emergency medical care becomes a national system' and dispatches a presidential secretary.
In the medical system centered on university hospitals that produce doctors, the emergency room, which was the center of patient absorption, was ‘blocked from access’ by the meteor system, and in an attempt to forcibly disperse specialists to regional emergency centers, a ‘patient dispersion and acceptance’ strategy was applied. As a result, the addition of 2,000 doctors and the application of blocking of patient absorption and entry to university hospitals led to a state of emergency treatment impossibility in each region, and administrative officials made a drastic turn to a system of direct supervision of treatment institutions in order to maintain a formal emergency system.
Professors at Seoul National University Hospital distinguished between ‘emergency medical care,’ ‘essential medical care,’ and ‘regional medical care’ in their declaration of the current situation on the 5th, but before this, President Yoon declared that ‘emergency medical care is the core of essential medical care’ at regional emergency centers and declared it the center of the national medical care system that is not in the Medical Act.
The presidential office announced on the 5th that it is pushing forward with a plan to send one first-class presidential secretary to each of the 17 metropolitan city and provincial emergency medical sites nationwide. On the night of the 4th, President Yoon announced the transition to a “national emergency room system” at Uijeongbu St. Mary’s Hospital, the emergency medical center for the northern Gyeonggi region, saying, “Emergency medical care is the most essential of essential medical care, but it is regrettable that the state has not been able to properly provide assistance.” A high-ranking official in the presidential office told the press, “The ‘emergency room spin-off’ is not due to the increase in medical schools, but rather the absolute lack of emergency medicine specialists. That is why President Yoon Seok-yeol proposed medical reform,” and “We are making up for the shortage of doctors due to the absence of specialists by bringing in military doctors, public health doctors, etc.” He explained the “exclusion of specialists by subject” to the Dong-A Ilbo, and announced that “emergency medicine specialists are the ‘regional medical system treatment specialists’.” The most advanced emergency medicine in the United States is the initial device for specialized treatment, and the key is to connect with follow-up surgical specialized treatment, and in any region, 911 is responsible for transporting patients to the emergency room, and the emergency room does not refuse, but is in charge of rapid treatment measures and post-treatment planning, and the medical administrative officer decides how to charge emergency and treatment costs based on the patient's financial status after the patient's treatment, and the shortfall is covered with financial support.
The Korean Medical Act only stipulates that <the number of beds in a general hospital that meets the designated criteria exceeds the number of beds required by treatment area notified by the Minister of Health and Welfare> as the standard for a 'higher-level general hospital', and there is no separate standard for an emergency room.
On the morning of the 5th, at the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters meeting of the Doctors' Group Action, Park Min-soo, 2nd Vice Minister of Health and Welfare, announced that an 'Emergency Medical Management Situation Team' will be established and operated with local government heads as the team leaders, and "We will designate a 1:1 dedicated manager for each of the 409 emergency medical institutions nationwide," thereby announcing the operation of an administrative bureaucratic management system for regional emergency medical systems. In the medical situation, Vice Minister Park announced the ‘Standards for Accepting Patients at Higher-Level General Hospitals’ in succession, and in particular, announced the ‘Exclusion Criteria for Severe Cases’ from the ‘Standards for Emergency Patients’ to prohibit the use of university hospitals.
According to the ‘Status of Messages Restricting Emergency Room Treatment’ by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, from February, when residents left the medical field due to the announcement of an increase in medical schools on the 5th, to August 26th, the total number of ‘Messages Restricting Emergency Room Treatment’ was 72,411, which is a sharp increase of 13,407 (22.7%) from the same period last year (59,004 cases).
According to the Central Emergency Medical Center’s statistics, the ‘possibility of follow-up treatment’ at regional and local emergency medical centers is limited to an average of 103 medical institutions that can treat 27 diseases as of the 3rd. Among 44 regional emergency treatment centers, 136 regional emergency medical centers, and 228 regional emergency medical institutions, 405 emergency rooms are open 24 hours a day.
The medical system, which grew around university hospitals, had residents (trainees) at higher-level general hospitals handle a significant portion of emergency medical care and night care, and patients flocked to large hospitals. Intern residents took advantage of the opportunity to advance to large hospitals or become private specialists through specialists. However, the Yoon Seok-yeol administration attempted to disperse patients to regional emergency centers and implement an ‘inflow strategy’ for specialists, but residents opposed the ‘policy to control opportunities for advancement to higher levels’ and this was thwarted.
Yoon Seok-yeol's medical system is a strategy of 'conversion to expensive medical industry' by administrative bureaucrats through a financial plan of 10 trillion won in national finance and 10 trillion won in national insurance finance, activating medical-related funds and assigning medical professional status to the executive branch, and applying the 'emergency patient bait method' of 'capturing and dispersing patients to emergency rooms' inducing 'dispersing doctors by region'.
Prime Minister Han Duck-soo said in his answer to the National Assembly on the 3rd, "The public's anxiety was ultimately caused by the first wrongdoing of residents who left severely ill patients and incurable patients,"
Regarding residents (trainees) who are not directly related to patients as ‘medical system assistants,’ it was stipulated that ‘residents are the ones who provide essential treatment.’
The 'Medical Act' is to <protect and promote the health of the people by regulating matters necessary for national medical care so that all citizens can receive high-quality medical benefits>, and the executive branch only has the authority to permit 'medical professionals' and 'hospitals' according to the law.