Expansion of Dementia Treatment Infrastructure... Increasing Long-term Care Facilities to 100 by 2025

[Asia Economy Reporter Dongwoo Lee] The government plans to expand 100 dedicated long-term care institutions by 2025 to provide specialized treatment and care for dementia patients. Support for dementia differential examination fees will also be increased to cover up to 150,000 KRW per person.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare announced on the 25th that it finalized these details through the review of the National Dementia Management Committee for the "4th Comprehensive Dementia Management Plan" (2021?2025).

This plan mainly includes expanding infrastructure for the treatment and care of dementia patients. The number of dementia-specialized long-term care institutions will increase by 100 to reach 310 by 2025. The dementia-specialized rooms in these long-term care institutions will also be expanded from 264 to 388. Currently, there are 4 dementia relief hospitals, which will increase to 22 by 2025.

Additionally, by 2025, dementia-specialized wards will be established in 70 public nursing hospitals, and for regions without public nursing hospitals, a plan to support fees will also be prepared.

The dementia relief centers will link their dementia integrated management system with other health and welfare systems such as the National Health Insurance Service and Happy e-um, allowing access to medical information and long-term care service usage details of dementia patients.

Currently, the government support ceiling for dementia differential examination fees will be gradually raised to a maximum of 150,000 KRW per person. At present, the government support ceiling is up to 110,000 KRW per person.

Starting next year, the results of cognitive impairment tests from the national health checkup will be notified to dementia relief centers, enabling the centers to quickly identify individuals in the community who need dementia testing.

A "Korean-type dementia screening tool" that can be used as a primary screening tool at nationwide dementia relief centers will also be developed. To provide professional care services to patients with mild dementia, the shelter program, which was previously available only to long-term care recipients with cognitive support grades, will be opened to those with long-term care grade 5 as well.

The current long-term care grading system, which consists of six grades (grades 1?5 and cognitive support grade), will be reorganized to better measure the care needs of elderly dementia patients. A related pilot project will be conducted next year, with implementation planned from 2023.

Support for families of dementia patients will also be strengthened. From 2023, the government will promote a plan to calculate mental health professional treatment for families of dementia patients under health insurance fees. The number of institutions providing short-term care services, which offer temporary care for dementia patients for several days, will be expanded from 88 to 350 by 2025.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare expects that approximately 1.3 trillion KRW will be required over five years to implement this plan.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.