Revolutionizing Healthcare: 10 Trillion Won Investment to Transform General Tertiary Hospitals into Specialist Powerhouses

The government has decided to invest 10 trillion won over three years to transform tertiary general hospitals into specialist and critical illness centers.

We decided to improve the system by focusing on the treatment of seriously ill patients, increasing the rate of serious treatment in general tertiary hospitals to 70% and reducing the number of beds in general hospitals by up to 15%, while increasing hospitalization rates for intensive care units and rooms with four or fewer people by 50%.

The government group for the promotion of medical reform announced today that it has finalized the plan to promote the project to support the restructuring of high-level general hospitals following yesterday’s report of the health insurance policy deliberation committee and today’s discussion with the central headquarters for security and disaster countermeasures for doctors. Collective action.

This support project, which is promoted in the form of a pilot project, provides unprecedented support in terms of taxes, etc. whether participating medical institutions submit a plan according to the standards presented by the government and comply with them.

As initially announced, the government has decided to gradually increase the proportion of serious treatments in tertiary general hospitals from 50% to 70%, but to provide incentives to hospitals with a low proportion of severe cases if they reach a certain target, even if they . do not reach 70%.

In the process of changing the structure of general tertiary hospitals, the overall scope of treatments is expected to be reduced, but the government plans to focus on serious and emergency treatments while maintaining staff employment levels through team treatment of specialists, nurses , etc. .

The government also announced that it will reduce the percentage of medical residents in the total number of doctors from the current 40% to 20%, but has decided not to provide specific standards to the medical institutions participating in the pilot project on how to reduce the percentage of medical residents .

However, we believe that if a multi-institutional collaborative training model is established and implemented so that residents can gain diverse experiences, including in moderate or lower case surgery, the reliance on residents from tertiary general hospitals will naturally decrease.

The government has decided to support health insurance worth about 10 trillion won over the next three years to ensure stable structural transformation of tertiary hospitals through pilot projects. This is separate from the “health insurance investment” plan.

The government will begin accepting applications for the pilot project on the 2nd of next month, but plans to keep the application period until after the end of the year to allow medical institutions to adequately prepare. Support to participating hospitals will be provided in 2026 after a performance evaluation from January to December of the following year. Payment is made by: