Hospitals close wards, go into debt after junior doctors’ walkout

Social Affairs

Published: 28 Mar. 2024, 18:29 Updated: 28 Mar. 2024, 19:34

Hospitals close wards, go into debt after junior doctors’ walkout

Medical professors at a general hospital in downtown Seoul on Thursday tender their resignations in protest to the government's decision to add 2,000 seats in medical schools' admission. [NEWS1]

Seoul’s largest hospitals are closing inpatient wards to cut operating costs, mainly due to snowballing debt.

With the junior doctors’ walkout, understaffed hospitals had no choice but to cancel or reduce their medical appointments and operations, which are their primary revenue sources.

Seoul National University Hospital closed 10 of its 60 wards to mitigate its financial downturn. The hospital’s short-stay ward at the emergency room and several wards managed by the cancer center and the internal medicine department no longer accommodate patients. Due to the partial closure, the hospital diverted its patients to other operating wards.

Asan Medical Center — accruing a daily debt of over a billion won ($7.4 million) due to a decreased number of patients — shut down nine wards out of its 56. The hospital entered a phase of emergency business management on March 15.

Seoul St. Mary's Hospital also vacated its patients from two wards among its 19 nonspecialized wards. Its services are expected to downsize due to professors submitting resignations to the hospital's affiliated medical school at the Catholic University of Korea until next Wednesday.

Severance Hospital — managed by Yonsei University — is reviewing plans to converge its six wards into three from the hospital's total of 75 wards.

Kangbuk Samsung Hospital reviewed its plan to dispatch board-certified emergency medicine doctors to the intensive care unit in light of the current situation but have yet to implement it.

Amid the ongoing reshuffling and restructuring, non-physician health workers at Seoul National University Hospital and Asan Medical Center face the possibility of being furloughed.

"There are some cases where the hospital asks nurses to use future holidays in advance," a labor union official at Seoul National University Hospital said.

Asan Medical Center has "temporarily" allowed its administrative employees, technicians and nurses to use a maximum of a month-long unpaid leave since early March.

Deputy Minister for Healthcare Policy Jun Byung-wang speaks during a briefing at the Seoul Government Complex in central Seoul on Thursday. [NEWS1]

The return of junior doctors is not only critical to save the hospitals mired in debt — it is also critical to save their careers.

The government on Thursday called on successful intern candidates saying, “Failure to register one’s record on the state-run Council for Graduate Medical Training by next Tuesday will make them disqualified to receive training until September.”

“To commence the trainings in the first half of this year, the candidates must complete registration by April 2,” said Deputy Minister for Healthcare Policy Jun Byung-wang from the Health Ministry in a briefing held at the Seoul Government Complex on the same day.

“[The ministry] hopes that intern candidates and junior doctors will return to their hospitals to stand by their patients before it becomes too late.”

A medical professional walks inside a general hospital in Seoul on Thursday. [NEWS1]

The government will reduce the working hours of junior doctors as a means to improve their labor conditions.

The government amended the Act on the Improvement of Training Conditions and Status of Medical Residents last month, capping weekly working hours at 80. Junior doctors' double shifts will only be extended to 36 hours straight.

Although the revision will be effective next February, the law will be piloted this May.

The government will also hand out a 1 million won monthly award to junior doctors studying obstetrics and emergency medicine, thus expanding the current beneficiary scope currently limited to cardiovascular and pediatric departments.

Lim Hyun-taek, the new president-elect of the Korea Medical Association, sent a political warning to the conservative People Power Party on Thursday, saying he would not support them in the upcoming general election.

The occupational association has been opposing the government's decision to expand medical schools' admission quota by 2,000 seats.

“[The KMA will do its best] to elect the New Reform Party’s candidate who was a former doctor,” Lim said. "The association has a strategy that can help a certain party win or lose 20 to 30 seats [of 300 seats] in the upcoming April 10 general election.”

A professor of rehabilitation medicine stages a one-man rally in protest of the government’s decision to add 2,000 seats in medical schools’ admission quota on Thursday at Pusan National University Hospital in Busan. The protest sign says that the health care problem is not about shortage of doctors. [PUSAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL]

BY LEE SOO-JUNG [lee.soojung1@joongang.co.kr]