Riddled with issues barring effective pediatric care, the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) said on Friday that it prepared follow-up measures to prevent the collapse of pediatric care including doubling the night-time pediatric consultation fee and increasing pediatric hospital facility budgets.
The Pediatric Medical System Improvement Plan aims to strengthen the pediatric medical care system to ensure a smooth connection from local hospitals and clinics to severe pediatric care and improve prospects such as reasonable compensation and enhanced education and training to secure human resources.
The collapse of pediatric care in Korea has been fueled by the high cost of training and the legal burden in case of medical accidents which make doctors reluctant to specialize in pediatrics. In the first half of this year, the application rate for pediatrics was only 16.6 percent.
Consequently, the government has decided to provide a training subsidy of 1 million won (approximately $748) per month for pediatric specialists and full-time pediatric doctors. Additionally, to support medical accidents, legal experts will also be provided to help ease the legal burden on pediatric doctors.
In addition to general practitioners, there will also be a special fee for specialist doctors. For example, pediatricians will be paid for treating children under the age of six.
Another issue that surfaced was that hospitals have been closing or reducing the hours of their pediatric emergency departments at night, leading to complaints from parents who were unable to find a hospital to take their kids who fell ill.
In response, the compensation for hospital and clinic-level consultations and pharmacies for children under the age of six during late night hours will be doubled. Additionally, five pediatric consultation centers will be established so that parents can consult over the phone when their children are sick, including information on emergency and night and holiday medical institutions.
Hospitals and clinics, which operate at night and on holidays, will be supported with an average of 200 million won per hospital.
Earlier this year, the government introduced a pilot project to compensate for medical losses after the fact to help children's public specialty medical centers, which are responsible for short-term hospitalization of critically ill children and home treatment pilot projects.
Accordingly, the budget for facilities and equipment for public specialized pediatric medical centers will be increased from 1 billion won this year to 6.1 billion won next year to strengthen severe and emergency pediatric care.
Correspondingly, two more pediatric emergency medical centers will be added. Observation fees for severe emergency and urgent care centers will be increased by 100 percent for children under 1 year old and 50 percent for children between 1 and 8 years of age.
Pediatric hospitalization fees, currently 30 percent for children under 8, will be increased to 50 percent for children under 1. Hospital and clinic-level neonatal and maternity unit hospitalization fees will also increase by 50 percent.
When a pediatric patient is admitted to a hospitalization unit under the care of an inpatient specialist, a 50 percent surcharge will be added for children under eight years of age.
However, there will be no increase in the co-payment for hospitalization, but patients will pay 720 to 6,860 won for pediatric severe emergency observation.
"Through these measures, we have provided an improved outlook for pediatric care, secured medical personnel, and prepared a multifaceted support plan to ensure a smooth connection from local hospitals and clinics to pediatric care centers for critically ill children," said the MOHW Vice Health Minister Cho Kyoo-hong. "We will work together with the Health and Insurance Review Assessment Service (HIRA) to organize the details regarding policy implementation.”