Ministry of Health and Welfare Allocates 58 Billion Won for Personnel Costs Including On-Call Duty to Prepare for Medical Service Gaps

On the 6th, Cabinet Meeting Approves 128.5 Billion KRW Contingency Fund Expenditure
Ministry of Health and Welfare 125.4 Billion KRW, Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs 3.1 Billion KRW
Strengthening Severe and Emergency Response... Focus on Workforce Reinforcement

The Ministry of Health and Welfare will spend more than half of the 120 billion won reserve fund, including 58 billion won for emergency medical personnel wages, to address the medical service gap caused by the departure of resident doctors.

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On the 6th, the government approved the expenditure of 128.5 billion won from the reserve fund at the Cabinet meeting to minimize confusion in medical sites caused by collective action by doctors. Of this, 125.4 billion won is allocated to the Ministry of Health and Welfare and 3.1 billion won to the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare focused the newly allocated reserve fund on strengthening medical personnel.

Accordingly, about half of the reserve fund, 58 billion won, will be temporarily used to support wages for on-duty professors, fellows, and emergency medical personnel to maintain emergency and critical patient care functions at tertiary general hospitals and other institutions.

Last month, the Ministry of Health and Welfare established an 'Emergency Medical Response Plan' to minimize patient inconvenience and damage caused by doctors' collective action and announced a 'Supplementary Emergency Medical Response Plan' to strengthen critical and emergency care functions at tertiary general hospitals. The ministry explained that this reserve fund aims to reinforce medical personnel and establish an efficient medical utilization and supply system so that these emergency medical response plans can operate smoothly at frontline medical sites.

Fifty-nine billion won will be invested to dispatch public health doctors and military doctors to medical institutions such as tertiary general hospitals and regional base hospitals, where personnel shortages are worsening.

Additionally, 39.3 billion won has been allocated to public medical institutions within regions, such as the National Medical Center and local medical centers, to provide extended weekday care and weekend/holiday treatment to minimize disruption to local residents' medical services. In particular, 1.2 billion won will be invested to further strengthen medical support in areas requiring special protection, such as high-risk maternal and neonatal integrated treatment centers and neonatal intensive care regional centers. A new budget has also been allocated to improve the medical utilization and supply system between tertiary general hospitals and general hospitals. Tertiary general hospitals will focus on admitting and operating on critically ill patients, while patients with moderate and mild conditions will be encouraged to use general hospitals according to their diseases and symptoms. The patient transfer system will be strengthened around medical cooperation centers, and additional incentives will be provided to general hospitals that treat patients transferred from tertiary general hospitals. Forty billion won has been allocated for this purpose.

To alleviate emergency room overcrowding, 42 regional emergency medical centers nationwide will operate focusing on critically ill emergency patients and high-difficulty surgeries. Sixty-eight billion won will be provided to classify emergency patients by severity and transfer mild and non-emergency patients to regional emergency medical centers and regional emergency medical institutions for treatment. Furthermore, a budget of 500 million won has been included to support ambulance fees for patients transferred from tertiary general hospitals to primary and secondary hospitals through medical cooperation centers to improve patient acceptance during inter-hospital transfers.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare will execute the reserve fund based on the required personnel needs of each medical institution to ensure timely reinforcement of emergency medical personnel and plans to continuously listen to and improve difficulties faced in medical sites.

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