The government has cut about half of the 300 billion won budget allocated this year for residency-related projects during the process of preparing the 2025 supplementary budget. Although the budget was set based on the premise of '80% return of residents', the return rate barely surpassed 18% by the first half of the year, leading the government to conclude that a significant portion of the budget would remain unused.
Amid attention on whether the Lee Jae-myung government can resolve the prolonged conflict with the medical community, the government is keeping open the possibility that over 50% of residents will return by the end of the year.
According to the government on the 20th, the government deliberated and approved the 2025 second supplementary budget proposal at the Cabinet meeting the previous day. The scale of the supplementary budget is about 30.5 trillion won.
The government decided that 5.3 trillion won of the total supplementary budget resources will be covered by expenditure restructuring. A government official explained, "We have thoroughly implemented a practical spirit by restructuring projects that are expected to be difficult to execute this year's budget."
The restructuring targets include the project for 'training and appropriate management of medical personnel.' Last year, the project budget was 29.1 billion won, but this year, over 10 times that amount, 299.13 billion won, has been allocated to promote medical reform.
The project aims to improve the 'poor training environment for residents' that became a pretext for collective action after the announcement of increased admissions to medical schools early last year. Among this, about 233.2 billion won has been earmarked for the 'support project for innovation in the training environment of residents' that pays stipends to specialists mentoring residents. When combined with the project for payments to residents in essential medical fields (about 41.5 billion won), the total budget amounts to 274.7 billion won.
This budget was set based on the premise that '80% of the 13,531 residents who existed before the transfer would return.'
However, as the majority of residents refused to return in the first half of the year, the government decided to cut this project budget by about half through expenditure restructuring.
A government official noted, "While the slow return of residents is one of the causes, it is significant that none of the budget has been executed to date because hospitals are not participating in the project," and added, "Still, we haven't lost hope and minimally reduced the budget under the assumption that at least 50% of residents will return."
According to the Residency Training Environment Evaluation Committee of the Ministry of Health and Welfare, as of this month, the current number of residents in training is 2,532, which is only 18.7% of the pre-transfer level. To reach a return rate of 50% of the pre-transfer level, more than 4,200 residents, which is 1.7 times the current number, need to return.
The Lee Jae-myung government, which launched amid prolonged medical vacancies, is facing demands from the medical community to prioritize resolving conflicts with the medical community as a national policy task. To this end, the Ministry of Health and Welfare is reportedly planning to form a 'medical crisis task force (TF)'.
Recently, there are also voices within the medical community expressing that some residents wish to return. It has been reported that about 200 residents who resigned conveyed their intention to return in September to the Seoul Medical Association.
They stated, "We want to inform that there are many residents who wish to return, contrary to the recent stance of the Korean Association of Resident Physicians (KARAP)." They also said, "Even with the new government in place, the Korean Medical Association (KMA) and KARAP are neglecting the situation without sufficient opinion gathering to represent our voices."