A project to match senior doctors with local public healthcare institutions will begin in July in earnest to help narrow the medical divide between regions.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare held a meeting with the Korean Medical Association (KMA) and the National Medical Center (NMC) on Tuesday to discuss the “Senior Doctor-Local Public Medical Institution Matching Project.”
The project is one of the specific action programs of the “Healthcare System Regulatory Innovation Plan” announced by the Office of the Prime Minister in January to alleviate medical disparities between regions. It connects retired doctors willing to work or those seeking to change workplaces before retirement with local public medical institutions, like local medical centers and Red Cross hospitals.
In recent years, local public medical institutions, including local medical centers, have experienced a serious shortage of medical professionals due to the increasing concentration of human resources in the Seoul metropolitan region, the main reason for the decline in medical accessibility for provincial residents.
The ministry, the KMA, and NMC agreed on the seriousness of the shortage of local medical personnel for essential care and the need to implement a plan to make the most of senior doctors at the National Assembly last October.
Starting with signing a business agreement between the KMA and NMC in January, they have held working-level consultations while collecting opinions from clinical fields to work out a concrete program.
They will conduct the project in earnest, starting with a survey in July on local public medical institutions concerning their demand for recruiting medical personnel.
Fifty-six medical institutions have expressed their intention to participate in the project, and the ministry plans to encourage active participation by retired doctors and other workers by strengthening publicity for this project with the KMA and NMC.
"To resolve the manpower shortage experienced by local public medical institutions, it is necessary to comprehensively discuss improving the overall medical personnel training system from a long-term perspective and preparing a plan for the influx of trained personnel into local and essential medical care," said Park Hyang, director-general for medical policy planning at the ministry.
However, considering that it takes at least 10 years to train doctors through such a policy improvement process and deploy trained doctors to local and essential medical areas, matching local public medical institutions using senior doctors can be an effective alternative in the short term, Park added.