Ministry of Health and Welfare proposes revisions to medical quality assessment standards; new indicator on non-covered treatment costs added

[123RF]
[123RF]

Specialist hospitals will no longer be evaluated on the number of patients per doctor or per nurse under a proposed overhaul of quality assessment indicators.

Under a revised notice on "Standards for Calculating Medical Quality Assessment Subsidies" that the Ministry of Health and Welfare announced Friday, the indicators "number of patients per physician" and "number of inpatients per nurse (reflecting career experience)" will be removed from the medical quality and patient safety assessment category used to calculate medical quality assessment subsidies.

The move is intended to shift hospitals away from meeting quantitative benchmarks set by the government and toward voluntarily improving the quality of their medical services.

Under the public interest assessment category, a new pilot indicator — "proportion of non-covered treatment costs" — will be added after the existing item on compliance with non-covered treatment cost disclosure standards.

The addition is designed to curb excessive non-covered treatments by factoring the share of out-of-pocket costs borne by patients into hospital evaluations.

The revised notice also stipulates that specialist hospitals newly designated for the first time will be assigned the lowest rating, "C," only in their first year.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare said the revisions stem from deliberations by the Specialist Hospital Review Committee and aim to add and remove indicators in the 2026 specialist hospital medical quality assessment, encouraging healthcare institutions to voluntarily pursue quality improvements and provide the public with higher-quality medical services.


thlee@heraldcorp.com