Medical school professor resigns my way… The ‘Special Committee on Legislation’ was launched in half.

Special Committee on Medical Affairs holds its first meeting without the medical community
“There will be no specific discussions on medical school quota”
Less than 10% of resignation letters meet repair requirements
‘Big 5’ professors struggle for simultaneous hiatus

Health and Medical Union: “Korea Medical Association and Daejeon Cooperative, cold water to public expectations”… Appeal for participation in special committee

On the 25th, when the government launched the President’s ‘Medical Reform Special Committee’ to discuss medical reform, medical school professors ‘declared’ their departure from the hospital, saying that the resignation letter submitted a month ago had become effective. The Medical Reform Special Committee ‘started with open doors’ without the medical community, including the Korean Medical Association (KMA) and the Korean Medical Residents Association (Daejeon Medical Association), and decided not to discuss increasing the number of medical schools for the time being. While the government and the medical community are unable to narrow their contacts and stick to ‘My Way’, the insides of patients are burning like charcoal.

The first meeting of the Medical Reform Special Committee was held at the Seoul Government Complex on this day. It has been three months since the plan to launch a special committee was announced at a public livelihood debate chaired by President Yoon Seok-yeol on February 1. The chairman is Noh Yeon-hong, president of the Korea Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Association, and 15 people recommended by 10 supplier groups and 5 consumer groups, and 5 experts participate as civilian members.

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The special committee has raised its anchor…

Noh Yeon-hong (front row), chairman of the Presidential Special Committee on Medical Reform, and president of the Korea Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Association, attended the first meeting of the special committee held at the Seoul Government Complex on the 25th.
Reporter Do Jun-seok

The special committee decided to first discuss four key tasks, including ▲strengthening compensation for severe and essential medical care, ▲normalizing the medical delivery system, ▲introducing a national responsibility system for resident training, and ▲strengthening the medical accident safety net and announcing a specific roadmap in the first half of the year. We will pursue increases in fees (compensation for medical services), innovation in the payment system, bold financial investment, improvement of the working environment for medical residents, and enactment of a special law for handling medical accidents.

Chairman Noh said, “It is possible to discuss the medical school quota in a broad sense, but there are currently no plans to discuss it in detail.” Previously, the government proposed discussing the issue of increasing the number of medical schools in a ‘one-to-one consultative body’ with the medical community, but the Korean Medical Association and Daejeon Medical Association refused to participate.

The health and medical union said, “The absence of participation in the special committee of the Korean Medical Association and the Daejeon Medical Association is an act that pours cold water on the expectations of patients and the public for the normalization of medical treatment.” “Before blaming the government and media for ‘stop demonizing doctors,’ why should the public blame doctors?” “We need to reflect on whether there is any hostility toward us,” he said.

If doctors continue to refuse participation, it is expected that it will not be easy for them to settle in the medical field even if the special committee produces results. In addition, banning mixed medical treatment, introducing private practice licenses, and opening the beauty market are policies that doctors oppose as much as increasing the number of medical schools, so some are skeptical about whether discussions without the parties involved will be effective.

It has become the ‘resignation D-day’ that medical school professors had predicted, but it has been determined that there is still no clear movement in the ‘Big 5’ hospitals. An official at a large hospital said, “If you want to resign, you have to hand over the job, but we haven’t received any requests to adjust the outpatient or surgery schedule.” The explanation is that the possibility of mass resignations occurring seems small.

Some say that less than 10% of resignation letters are properly submitted and meet the requirements for acceptance. Full-time professors at national universities are civil servants, so they can only resign if their resignation is accepted by the appointing authority. In addition, Article 660 of the Civil Code, which stipulates that ‘resignation becomes effective one month after submission of the resignation letter’, only applies to ’employees without a contract on the period of employment’, but there are many medical school professors who have signed ’employment contracts with a contract’, so there are many variables. Medical school professors who do not have the conditions to resign are expected to put pressure on the government by fighting ‘unauthorized absences’ or ‘shutdown’ medical treatment once a week.

However, it is predicted that over time, the number of professors leaving the hospital will gradually increase as their resignation takes effect. This is because there are professors who did not resign immediately but expressed their intention to resign in the future. Kang Hee-kyung and Ahn Yo-han, professors in the Department of Pediatrics and Nephrology at Seoul National University Hospital, submitted their resignation letters and set the end of their employment as August 31. This is to resign after transferring the pediatric kidney disease patients he was caring for to another hospital. They informed the patients, “We want to send patients to trustworthy specialists, so please let us know which hospital you want.”

The Emergency Response Committee of Seoul National University College of Medicine and the Seoul National University Hospital Faculty Association will discuss whether to close once a week after the closure on the 30th. Severance Hospital and Korea University Medical Center also decided to suspend outpatient treatment and surgery on the 30th and close once a week. Asan Medical Center and Samsung Seoul Hospital also participate in the once-a-week closure. The Catholic University College of Medicine, which has Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital as its teaching hospital, also began an internal review. It is expected that professors at the ‘Big 5’ hospitals will continue to struggle to take temporary leave of absence.

The government held a health insurance policy deliberation committee meeting on this day and decided to focus on increasing compensation in areas that have high work intensity but are relatively undervalued, such as pediatric surgery and treatment and closed wards at tertiary general hospitals. The policy fee (KRW 200,000 per day) per patient admitted to the intensive care unit for high-risk pregnant women is supported for up to 7 days.

Reporters Ji-eun Han from Seoul and Hyun-jeong Lee from Sejong

2024-04-26 Page 1