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Patients are flocking to the big hospitals, while doctors are soaring to clinic-level medical institutions.
The number of doctors in hospitals and convalescent hospitals is on the decline.
 
The medical treatment-related organization that has been chosen by most medical doctors for the past ten years was a clinic-level medical institution.

The number of medical doctors who work in clinic-level medical institutions has increased by 4.1%p over the past 10 years and the figure is nearly double that of general hospitals (2.4%) which is ranked No. 2.

According to the healthcare open big data of Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service, the number of doctors has increased by 21,511 from 90,710 to 112,321 in the period of 2013 through fourth quarter 2022.

It was found that the number of doctors who work at the clinic-level medical institution has increased the most although there was a difference in the trend of increase on the type of medical institution.

In 2013, the number of doctors working at the clinic-level medical institution was 30,555 (39.1%), but it increased to 48,584 (43.2%), a total increase of 4.1%p (13,028) in 2022.

The number of doctors working in high-level general hospitals has increased by 2.4%p (21,305 → 23,653), and that of general hospitals has increased by only 0.2% (17,537 → 21,991).

The number of doctors working in hospital-level medical institutions and convalescent hospitals is on the decline. There were 10,084 doctors working at the hospital-level medical institutions in 2013, but the number increased by only 366 in 2022, a decrease of 1.7%p in the total number of doctors.
 
The number of doctors working at the convalescent hospitals has also decreased by 1.9%p from 5,861 in 2013 to 5,055 in 2022.

Meanwhile, the share of general practitioners and specialists has maintained a similar statistic over the past decade. The share of general practitioners was 5.4% (5,557) and specialists was 81% (83,147) in 2013. By the year 2022, the proportion of general practitioners has remained the same as before, while the proportion of specialists has increased to 83.2% (93,457).

The majority of general practitioners (57%) has worked in clinic-level medical institutions, and 46.4% of specialists have worked at clinic-level medical institutions.

by Kyeong-dae Ha