The government has concluded that the recent death of a cardiac arrest patient in her 80s in Daejeon while being transported by ambulance was not related to "emergency rooms’ refusal to accept patients.”

The Ministry of Health and Welfare said Tuesday that it reached such a conclusion after conducting a joint on-site inspection with Daejeon Metropolitan City, the National Fire Agency, the Central Emergency Medical Center, and the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service to investigate the cause of the patient in her 80s who went into cardiac arrest.

"The patient was a terminally ill cancer patient whose condition deteriorated during home hospice care and died during transportation," the ministry said, explaining that the case was "not related to ERs’ refusal to accept patients,” the ministry said.

The patient had been repeatedly hospitalized and discharged from a national hospital for biliary tract cancer. Around noon last Friday, she became unconscious at home and suffered a cardiac arrest while being transported by 119 paramedics after inquiring about the receiving hospital.

At that time, the guardian did not want CPR, so the 119 paramedics requested “direct medical guidance” from the emergency medicine specialist via telecommunication, withheld CPR, and transported the patient. The hospital judged the patient's DOA (dead on arrival) and declared her dead.

As the incident caused controversy as news media reported it as treatment refusal by ERs, the Korean Society of Emergency Medicine (KSEM) said, “It was not due to wandering around emergency rooms, nor was the time taken to transport the patient to the hospital due to the distance traveled related to the cause of death, but rather a case where the guardian did not want to perform CPR on the patient.”

KSEM expressed deep concern over the exaggerated reporting of DNR (do-not-resuscitate) cases of terminally ill cancer patients and the suggested collapse of the emergency medical system despite emergency physicians doing their best to provide care in a challenging environment of healthcare shortages.

"It is difficult to understand why news media continue to disturb the public with inaccurate and factually incorrect reports when emergency medicine specialists are doing their best to provide emergency medical care in an environment where there is a shortage of medical personnel," the society said.