의료 대책 퇴고_우지원

A Step in the right direction According to a report from the Ministry of Health and Welfare, “curable mortality rate,” the possibility of having survived if the patient had received timely medical treatments, was 47.28 per 100,000 people. Incheon had the highest rate in the country followed by Gangwon and South Gyeongsang province. This is the devastating reality of outpatients in rural areas. The medical care system is  directly linked to people‘s health and lives. Expanding medical manpower is no longer an option, but a necessity to revive the local medical care system.  The provincial areas are running short of doctors due to the concentration in the capital region. The number of doctors in Seoul is 3.4 per 1,000 people, whereas the average is less than two in 11 cities and provinces. If the Yoon administration does increase the medical school enrollment quota as promised, it should crease the number of doctors in the region. This can further resolve the regional imbalance existing in Korea. Flurry of patients are making costly expenses to go to the capital region for care due to lack of proper hospitals in the province. They not only have to cover expensive medical bills, but also subsidiary  expenses like transportation, and housing, which can be very costly considering the location of capital hospitals. Some outpatients are staying at study rooms to save money. These are bills being wasted because medical experts are mostly concentrated in the capital region. Medical elites in the province will also take a burden off the patients who have to travel back and forth after a long surgery.  The so-called Big Five, top five hospitals in South Korea, received 710,000 patients outside the capital region for a 1.5 million usd per year. Shortage of medical experts in the district is also a loss to the district area because there is outflow of more than 1 billion won per year. Expanding the quota cap and upgrading the standards of  national university hospitals in the region will bring profits, which can be used to offer higher salaries and better lifestyles to doctors in the provincial hospitals.  The Ministry of Health and Welfare has proposed to establish a Public medical college and to adopt special selection to increase the number of doctors in rural areas. This is a step in the right direction. Doctors are considered one of the highly-valued and paid jobs in Korea. Yet, rather than focusing on the high income,  medical students should have a deeper understanding of the importance of medical service. In order for this to take place, the government should take more restrictive measures on the number of medical students for each department and different cities.  This will evenly distribute the doctors,  even to departments and areas in need. However, most importantly, there should be extra incentives to encourage doctors in unpopular fields and rural areas.