Hospital waiting times increased during strike: report

South Korean patients had to wait longer for admission last year, as hospitals faced staff shortages due to a mass walkout by doctors protesting the government's medical reform plan.

Exluding patients who were admitted on the day, the average time patients had to wait for admission was 17.5 days last year, a report by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs commissioned by the Ministry of Health and Welfare showed Wednesday. This was an increase of 3.9 days compared to 13.6 days in 2023, and was the longest since the KIHASA started the annual survey in 2017.

The previous longest average waiting time was recorded in 2022, during which 6.9 percent of the surveyed patients said they had to wait for an average of 14.7 days.

The survey was conducted on 14,681 people between July 22 and Sept. 27, 2024, in the middle of the mass walkout that begin in February. Some 90 percent of those patients were able to be admitted immediately or on the day they designated, similar to the 89 percent in 2023.

But for the 1 in 10 patients that had to wait, the wait period had been substantially longer than before the medical strike. Close to 70 percent of patients with a pre-admission waiting period had to wait for at least 10 days.

The satisfaction rate for the medical services was high — 95.4 percent among admitted patients and 92.3 percent among outpatients.

Most outpatients were able to be treated when they wanted, with 0.4 percent of them having to wait for an average of 11.4 days.

The prolonged medical strike has led to a severe shortage of medical staff at local hospitals, with multiple reports of emergency patients being turned back due to lack of doctors. An ambulance carrying a cardiac arrest patient in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province was refused by 22 hospitals before she was taken to a hospital in Suwon, in Gyeonggi Province and over 100 kilometers away.

The doctors' walkout, resignation and medical students' boycotting class commenced after the government rolled out a plan to increase the quota for medical schools across the country by 2,000 for the 2025 school year. The Health Ministry in March backpedaled on the disputed plan for the time being, on condition that the medical students return to class by the end of the month.

According to the Ministry of Education Data on Tuesday, 96.9 percent of medical students across the country have returned. Only 24.2 percent of medical students from Inje University had returned, with 370 students expressing their intention to refuse tuition payments by the university's deadline on Thursday.

The majority of trainee doctors that had worked at university hospitals before participating in the walkout have yet to return to their initial post, with 59 percent of them found to have been hired by other hospitals in December, according to the Health Ministry. Unlike the medical students who have yet to receive their license, the trainee doctors have the option to work at private hospitals and clinics.