Hospitals in South Korea suffer huge economic losses

According to a medical source on March 27, the five major hospitals known as the “Big 5” are suffering financial losses of more than 1 billion won per day due to the mass resignation of trainee doctors. Due to the lack of human resources, the hospitals have combined the steps of the treatment process, merged departments and reduced the number of emergency rooms.

Seoul National University Hospital has closed 10 of its 60 departments, including the temporary emergency room and part of the cancer hospital's auxiliary area, to ensure efficiency in human resource management. The closed area, which was used only for surgery and internal medicine, has been opened for orthopedics, nephrology, and endocrinology.

Seoul National University Hospital is running a deficit of 100 billion won, a hospital official said. Busan National University Hospital is running a deficit of 60 billion won as of March 26.

Asan Medical Center in Seoul, which declared a state of emergency, has closed nine of its 56 departments. St. Mary’s Hospital in Seoul has closed two of its 19 departments. Meanwhile, the famous Severance Hospital in Seoul has also begun merging departments to operate under a state of emergency. The hospital is considering merging six of its 75 departments.

According to health officials, most of the departments and wards that have been closed are surgical departments, and this is due to a sharp decline in the number of surgeries as trainee doctors leave their jobs en masse. As the number of surgeries decreases, the number of patients admitted to the hospital also decreases, leading to a decrease in bed occupancy, eventually forcing hospitals to merge or close some departments.

Hospitals still maintain emergency rooms, but they are not operating at full capacity. After February 19, when trainee doctors quit en masse, hospitals also limited treatment to mild patients and focused on treating seriously ill patients.

To cope with the financial downturn, large hospitals not only extended treatment times, reduced the number of patients admitted, closed or merged specialized departments, but also reallocated their staff structure.

Due to the sharp decline in the number of surgeries and the inability to accept patients for treatment, hospitals are forcing other staff except doctors and nurses to take unpaid leave. Seoul National University Hospital and Asan Medical Center are reportedly accepting unpaid leave requests from non-medical staff.

A health sector leader said that with trainee doctors out of work for more than a month and current professors resigning, it is difficult to predict how hospitals will hold out.