[Yonhap]
[Yonhap]

More than 8 in 10 newly opened general-practice clinics registered dermatology as a treatment specialty, yet a significant share of those facilities filed no national health insurance claims for skin conditions whatsoever.

Data submitted to Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker Jeon Jin-suk, a member of the National Assembly's Health and Welfare Committee, by the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service show that 285 clinic-level medical institutions opened by general practitioners in 2025.

Of those, 243 — or 85.3 percent — listed dermatology as a treatment specialty, meaning more than 8 in 10 newly opened general-practice clinics held themselves out as dermatology providers.

Whether those clinics were in fact providing dermatological care, however, told a different story.

An analysis of national health insurance billing records for the 243 facilities found that 158 of them — about 65 percent — had filed not a single claim for skin conditions.

Geographic concentration also intensified. Of the 285 new general-practice clinics that opened in 2025, 129 were in Seoul and 59 in Gyeonggi Province, putting about 66 percent of all new openings in the Greater Seoul area. Gangnam-gu alone accounted for 50 new clinics — the highest of any district nationwide — followed by Seocho-gu with 20.

[Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service]
[Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service]

Lawmaker Jeon warned that the continued concentration of new clinic openings in certain specialties "could further worsen the shortage of personnel in essential and regional medicine." She called on the government to go beyond simply expanding the number of doctors and instead establish compensation structures and institutional incentives to encourage medical professionals to choose regional, essential and public medicine, in order to address the skewed distribution of the medical workforce.


thlee@heraldcorp.com