Minister of Health and Welfare Cho Kyu-hong: "We Can No Longer Delay Increasing the Number of Doctors"
On the 17th, the Ministry of Health and Welfare held the 5th Medical Workforce Expert Committee meeting at Seoul City Tower in Jung-gu, Seoul, to discuss the scale of medical school quota expansion.
The Medical Workforce Expert Committee is a subcommittee under the Health and Medical Policy Deliberation Committee, consisting of medical professionals, consumer groups, patient organizations, and experts. It was formed in the second half of this year to gather opinions from various stakeholders, not only from the medical community, regarding the expansion of medical personnel. This is the fifth meeting since the first meeting on August 31.
Minister of Health and Welfare Cho Kyu-hong stated in his opening remarks, "There is greater public expectation and social desire for an increase in medical personnel than ever before," adding that the government "is seriously aware of realities such as the 'pediatric open-run' and 'emergency room round-robin' and has determined that it can no longer delay increasing the number of doctors."
The government plans to increase the medical school quota, which has been capped at 3,058 students annually for 18 years, by as many as over 1,000 starting from the 2025 university admissions. This is due to the visible collapse of essential and regional medical services. On the other hand, the medical community maintains the position that increasing the medical school quota will not solve these structural medical problems.
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Regarding this, Minister Cho said, "Policy proposals from the medical community such as workforce redistribution, raising fees for essential medical services, and alleviating the burden of medical accidents also align with the direction the government wants to pursue," and added, "Since the shortage of doctors is an unavoidable issue, we ask you to present concrete and feasible alternatives for policy package discussions to be promoted alongside the expansion of medical personnel based on scientific statistical supply and demand forecasts."
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