Telehealth prescriptions for narcotics, psychotropics surpass 10,000 in 3 years

Over the past three years, more than 10,000 cases of narcotic and psychotropic drugs were prescribed through remote medical consultations.

Rep. Kim Seon-min of the Rebuilding Korea Party analyzed data from the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service  (HIRA) and disclosed its results on Wednesday.

According to Rep. Kim, from January 2023 to May 31, 2025, prescriptions for restricted-benefit drugs via non-face-to-face consultations totaled 13,545 cases. Notably, 84.2 percent of these, or 11,400 cases, were narcotics prescriptions. Among the narcotics prescriptions, 98.98 percent, or 11,277 cases, were psychotropic drug prescriptions.

By year, prescriptions for restricted reimbursable drugs via non-face-to-face consultations peaked at 9,638 cases during the temporary allowance period from January to May 2023. Subsequently, during the pilot program phase, prescriptions declined to 3,429 cases from June to December 2023, 359 cases in 2024, and 119 cases from January to May 2025, showing a gradual decrease in prescription volume. However, the prescription rate for psychotropic drugs at neighborhood clinics remains high.

In this situation, Rep. Kim pointed out that the bigger problem is the lack of comprehensive visibility into the prescription status of restricted reimbursable drugs prescribed via telemedicine.

“Currently, the Ministry of Health and Welfare has established guidelines for the telemedicine pilot project, stipulating that ‘even when prescribing drugs through telemedicine, narcotics, drugs with abuse or misuse concerns, emergency contraception, and obesity treatments cannot be prescribed through the Drug Utilization Review (DUR) system.’ However, since the DUR system is not mandatory, it is extremely difficult to verify compliance.”

Ultimately, no matter how many prohibited drugs the government announces for telemedicine prescriptions, there is no way to stop them if medical institutions prescribe them off-label without going through DUR, Kim added.

Rep. Kim continued, “We cannot abruptly halt non-face-to-face consultations while ignoring the many people who cannot visit medical institutions due to spatial or temporal constraints. The Ministry of Health and Welfare must develop countermeasures to prevent such problems, categorizing them into short-term and mid- to long-term tasks, and implement those that can be executed immediately.”