Routinizing telemedicine

The government has decided to allow consultations and prescribing via telemedicine though the Covid-19 emergency ended. The program lasts for three months, but it can buy time to find a lasting guideline amid the intense standoff between medical organizations and telemedicine service platform providers.

The government tried to accommodate the opinions of various stakeholders in the meantime. For children and teenagers, medical practitioners can provide consultations during weekends and after business hours, even without prior in-person examination records. Although prescribing is prohibited, first-time emergency patients can at least get medical advice.

The government allowed non-contact medical consultation and prescription from February 2020 only when Covid-19 patients showed serious symptoms. But after the danger of infection spread grew out of control, the government allowed patients to get treatment remotely in order to avoid infection from hospitals. Until last month, 14.19 million people used telemedicine, which means one out of every three Koreans. If non-contact medical service is suddenly cut off due to the lowered Covid-19 crisis level, many people will experience inconvenience from a lack of such service.

Telemedicine has long been a hot-button issue in the medical community. Despite the supremacy of Korea’s ICT, the telemedicine industry has been stalemated due to sharp conflicts among concerned parties. The pandemic has offered a breakthrough in the impasse over remote treatment. The hard-won momentum should not be wasted so that it can provide more convenient public health services while minimizing the potential risks. Telemedicine also has emerged as a promising medical service.

But the short trial period of three months is somewhat disappointing, given an earlier three-year testing period. Telemedicine cases reached 3,786, of which only five complaints were reported. The past three years had been sufficient for medical professionals to find the best possible solution for public healthcare by narrowing differences among associations representing doctors, dentists, traditional medicine doctors and nurses, as well as patients, consumers and the telemedicine industry. According to a survey by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, 77.8 percent of the public was satisfied with remote medical service, of which 87.8 percent wished to continue to use the service. But the ministry announced the measures only two days before the start of the trial period.

During the three-month period, the government must come up with a roadmap for a non-contact public healthcare system that can be acceptable to all parties involved. The service can be legitimate and permanent only when the National Assembly revises the Medical Act. As any issues related to public health can spark a political difference, as seen with the fallout of the Nursing Act, bipartisanship is necessary for telemedicine, too. It has become a desperate issue for children, older adults and people with disabilities, in particular.