Emergency Medical Centers to Sharply Strengthen Capacity for Severe and Critical Patients

Welfare Ministry Pre-Announces Amendment to Enforcement Rules of the Emergency Medical Service Act
Specialist Staffing Requirements for Regional Centers Doubled
Real-Time Reporting of Reasons for "Inability to Accept Patients" Made Mandatory

The government will overhaul the emergency medical delivery system to ensure that severe and critical patients can always find an emergency room capable of treating them and receive timely, appropriate care. Beyond simple procedures in emergency rooms, the designation criteria for regional and local emergency medical centers will be significantly strengthened, focusing on final treatment capabilities such as actual surgery and intensive care management.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare announced on the 27th that it will pre-announce legislation for a partial amendment to the Enforcement Rules of the Emergency Medical Service Act, reflecting these changes, through April 8.

The biggest change is that the treatment functions of emergency rooms and emergency medical institutions are now specified in detail in the law. Previously, the criteria focused mainly on facilities and equipment. Going forward, to be designated as a regional or local emergency medical center, institutions must be capable not only of providing emergency room care such as intubation, defibrillation, and mechanical ventilation, but also of intensive care management and performing emergency surgeries for conditions such as brain and abdominal emergencies in the stages following emergency room treatment.

To this end, medical institutions must secure the relevant medical departments and full-time specialists capable of providing such care. For regional emergency medical centers, the previous standard required one specialist per 10,000 patients when the number of annual visits in the previous year exceeded 30,000. Under the new standard, institutions must hire one specialist per 5,000 patients. For local emergency medical centers, a new requirement has been introduced to have one specialist per 7,000 patients.

The range of medical specialties that can be hired as full-time emergency room specialists at regional and local emergency medical centers will also be expanded from the existing 10 departments, including emergency medicine, internal medicine, surgery, and pediatrics, to 12 departments by adding obstetrics and gynecology and family medicine, thereby easing the burden of securing personnel. In addition, to strengthen 24-hour emergency patient transport and transfer systems, the number of dedicated emergency medical information management staff at regional emergency medical centers will be increased from two to four, and at least one staff member will be required to be on duty around the clock.

In terms of facilities, the criteria for using operating rooms at regional emergency medical centers will be relaxed so that general operating rooms can be used, provided that they operate 24 hours a day and are given priority use when emergency patients occur. Local emergency medical centers will be required to install at least three emergency-dedicated inpatient beds and at least two emergency-dedicated intensive care unit beds to increase their capacity.

The real-time emergency medical information-sharing system will also be codified in law. The head of an emergency medical institution must report to the National Emergency Medical Center not only the status of its facilities, equipment, and personnel, but also its capacity to accept emergency patients, the reasons when it cannot accept them, and the current status of its ability to perform surgery and procedures for severe emergency conditions. To facilitate smooth communication between hospitals, new rules will also be established on how to set up and operate dedicated emergency medical communication lines.

An official from the Ministry of Health and Welfare said, "This amendment is intended to solve the problem of emergency patients being unable to find a hospital that can accept them and to encourage emergency medical institutions to secure genuine treatment capabilities," adding, "We will finalize the amendment after widely collecting opinions from the public and frontline practitioners during the pre-announcement period."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.