Seoul National University Hospital's Daily Sales Drop by 1 Billion Won Each... Created a '100 Billion Won Revolving Credit'

Resident Departure Causes Sharp Drop in Bed Occupancy Rates
Seoul Asan Hospital and Other 'Big 5' See Revenue Decline

Due to the mass departure of residents, the 'Big 5' hospitals have been incurring losses of tens of billions of won per day.

According to the medical community on the 15th, Seoul Asan Medical Center has seen a sharp decline in bed occupancy rates, resulting in daily losses exceeding 1 billion won.

A representative from Seoul Asan Medical Center stated, "Starting from the 18th, we plan to integrate and rearrange wards focusing on patients with the same medical specialty or suffering from the same disease."

Amid the ongoing strong confrontation between the government and the medical community over the increase in medical school admissions, medical staff are moving at a large hospital in Seoul on the 29th, the government's deadline for residents who left hospitals to return. Photo by Kang Jin-hyung aymsdream@

Seoul National University Hospital has also reportedly experienced a daily revenue decrease of 1 billion won due to the recent medical service gap. The hospital was already operating at a deficit due to significant investments in public healthcare, but this medical service gap has worsened the situation. Accordingly, the limit on their overdraft account, which was originally 50 billion won, has been doubled to create a 100 billion won overdraft facility.

A representative from Seoul National University Hospital said, "To secure cash liquidity, we plan to increase the limit on the existing overdraft account as a preemptive measure."

Considering that residents began leaving their posts in mid-February, it is expected that losses will increase further in March. Since the 4th, these hospitals have already been accepting 'unpaid leave' applications from nurses and staff.

The operational difficulties of regional university hospitals are also worsening. Dong-A University Hospital is granting unpaid leave to about 2,200 employees, and Inje University Busan Paik Hospital has also been accepting unpaid leave applications from staff since last week.

Due to the departure of residents from their workplaces, overall medical utilization such as admissions and surgeries at tertiary general hospitals has significantly decreased.

According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, compared to the first week of February (1st to 7th), the average daily number of inpatients at tertiary general hospitals in the first week of March decreased by 36.5%. On the 4th, the number of inpatients even dropped by 40.7%.

As of the 11th, surgeries at tertiary general hospitals decreased by 52.9% compared to February 15th, cutting the number in half.

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