2.1% of health checkup clinics fail to disinfect endoscopes properly

Some 2.1 percent of medical institutions carrying out national health examinations were found to be inadequate in endoscope disinfection, and 80 percent of the inadequate institutions were neighborhood clinics.

Rep. Paik Jong-hun of the ruling People Power Party said so after analyzing data from the National Health Insurance Service's “Endoscope and Disinfection Status for the Last Five Years” data.

According to Paik, 593 health checkup centers, or 2.1 percent of the total, were inadequate in endoscope disinfection. Of those, 80.1 percent were small clinics.

According to the latest five-year annual endoscopy statistics from 2019 to August, gastroscopy increased by about 13 percent from 7.09 million in 2019 to 8.04 million in 2023. Colonoscopy decreased by 8.8 percent from 124,000 to 113,000.

The cost of screening increased by 30 percent for gastroscopy, from 402.2 billion won ($304 million) in 2019 to 547.8 billion won in 2023, and 9.6 percent for colonoscopy, from 12.5 billion won to 13.7 billion won.

Looking at the inspection results for disinfection of gastroscopes and colonoscopes over the past five years, 593 of 28,783 national health inspection centers, or 2.1 percent, received inadequate results.

By type of medical institution, neighborhood clinics recorded 375 inadequate gastroscope disinfection cases over the past five years, with their share of the total also rising from 75 percent in 2019 to 87 percent in 2023.

Of the 218 colonoscope disinfection failures over the past five years, these small clinics marked the highest proportion. They grew even faster than gastroscopes, increasing from 63 percent in 2019 to 87 percent in 2023.

Rep. Paik also pointed out problems in a related administrative notice of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. He noted that the current notice only defines the exposure time, type, and cleaning method of the disinfectant solution and lacks information on long-term and repeated use and disposal of disinfectant solutions that do not maintain the minimum effective concentration.

“I am concerned that patients undergoing endoscopic examinations may be infected with diseases due to excessive reuse of disinfectant solutions or endoscopes that are not properly disinfected, and the rate of inadequate disinfection at clinic-level medical institutions is gradually increasing,” Paik said.

The ruling party lawmaker emphasized that the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the National Health Insurance Service should establish guidelines for reusing and disposing of endoscope disinfectant solutions and strengthen management and supervision of endoscope disinfection practices.