Doctors reduce hours, cutting back surgeries and outpatient service

A patient, right, sits on a chair in a general hospital in Seoul Sunday, as a medical professional walks by. [YONHAP]

Doctors across Korea will limit their service hours starting Monday in protest of the government’s plan to expand the medical school admissions quota, hindering access to health care.

Medical professors at major hospitals will shorten their working hours, cutting back outpatient treatments and scheduled surgeries.

Some doctors at private clinics are reducing hours, too. The Korean Medical Association (KMA) — the nation’s largest doctors’ group — said Sunday that doctors running private clinics are also implementing a 40-hour workweek from April 1. After-hours treatment at private clinic hospitals is expected to become less available.

Medical professors are hired by general or large hospitals while doctors in private practice are self-employed by having full authority over self-owned private clinics.

In general hospitals providing secondary and tertiary care, medical professors will minimize outpatient appointments and focus on critically ill and emergency patients. They will delay or reschedule appointments for non-critically ill patients.

The Medical Professors Association of Korea, the representative body of medical professors, earlier capped their weekly working hours to 52 beginning March 25. The new measure — effective Monday — went a step further by prioritizing critically ill patients above all.

"Although the association cannot force all doctors in private practice [to follow the collective action], as it had been discussed earlier, those who prepared could implement such measures immediately," Kim Sung-geun, head of public relations for the KMA’s emergency committee, said on Sunday.

“Most members agreed that servicing only 40 hours a week is the most realistic way [for protest] and the association believes it will spread naturally.”

Patient anxiety has mounted as junior doctors have continued to protest for more than 40 days.

“The ongoing standoff with the mass resignation of medical professors and junior doctors poses a great threat to patients,” the Korea Alliance of Patients Organization said, Yonhap reported Monday.

The group called for an urgent resolution of the status quo, saying that the government’s and doctors’ “unwavering positions could result in a massive number of patients at the out-of-control level.”

The doctors have lobbied to cancel the 2,000-seat hike in medical school admissions, while the government has been pushing the scheme.

Labor unions at Seoul-based general hospitals suffering from the junior doctors' walkout will hold a press conference Monday urging their immediate return or revocation of professorial resignations.

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