(Image: Yonhap)
SEOUL, Sept. 3 (Korea Bizwire) — Starting this month, the government is expanding a trial run of allowing more medical institutions to join the hospice industry.
According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service, 14 new hospice institutions providing either home or consultation hospice services were given access to the national health insurance system.
As such, there are now 33 institutions that offer home-type hospice services and 25 offering consultation-type hospice services.
The hospice system helps terminally ill patients who have been diagnosed with a survival rate of only a few months by actively treating them and providing psychological and spiritual therapy to patients and their families in addition to medical treatment.
Home-type hospice teams provide regular care at the patient’s home while consultation-type services allow patients to visit their doctor at the clinic at the same while being cared for by a team of hospice experts externally.
The Health Ministry has been pushing recently for more medical institutions to join the hospice industry in order to improve the quality of life of terminally ill patients and their families.
A total of 25 medical institutions have been offering home-type hospice services since March of 2016.
With the new announcement, two new institutions each in Gyeonggi, Daejeon, Gangwon, North Jeolla and one from Jeju totaling an additional eight will allow more patients access to the services.
For consultation-type services, 19 institutions have been offering medical services since August of last year.
The new additions to the list will see two each from Seoul and Gyeonggi and one each from South Jeolla and South Gyeongnam regions, bringing the additional total to six this time around.
H. S. Seo (hsseo@koreabizwire.com)
