Ministry of Health and Welfare to Recruit Additional 'Responsible Medical Institutions' to Strengthen Regional and Essential Medical Services

The Ministry of Health and Welfare announced on the 9th that it will recruit one regional responsibility medical institution and 14 local responsibility medical institutions to strengthen essential medical services in the regions.

Since 2019, the government has been designating 'responsibility medical institutions' that are responsible for essential medical services in 17 nationwide regions and 70 local areas. Depending on the jurisdiction, these are divided into 'regional' responsibility medical institutions and 'local' responsibility medical institutions.

Regional responsibility medical institutions provide high-level essential medical services at the city/province level and plan and coordinate cooperation systems among medical institutions within the region. Local responsibility medical institutions provide high-quality essential medical services within 70 intermediate medical service areas and coordinate and connect with local public health medical institutions and others.

Since the introduction of the system, the number of responsibility medical institutions has continuously expanded, currently totaling 16 regional responsibility medical institutions and 42 local responsibility medical institutions. The government plans to increase the number of regional responsibility medical institutions and local responsibility medical institutions to 17 and 56, respectively, this year.

Selected regional responsibility medical institutions will receive a project fund of 660 million KRW, and local responsibility medical institutions will receive 480 million KRW.

The application targets are institutions performing public health medical services at the general hospital level or higher, which meet all designation requirements such as operating seven or more clinical departments including internal medicine, surgery, and obstetrics and gynecology.

Institutions wishing to apply must submit the relevant documents to the jurisdictional city/province by the 2nd of next month, and the selection results will be announced at the end of March after review by a screening committee including the Ministry of Health and Welfare.

A Ministry of Health and Welfare official stated, "We will continue to refine related systems to grant responsibility medical institutions the authority and responsibility for managing and evaluating regional medical resources to strengthen the essential medical cooperation network within the region, and to ensure they receive rewards based on their performance."

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