Assessment of the reasonable number of physicians in Korea

ABSTRACT

The government argues that the expansion of the number of physicians is inevitable due to the absolute lack of practising physicians in Korea compared to members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Further, the government contends that poor medical access and adverse effects on the national health level require such an expansion. This study aimed to verify whether the government’s claims regarding the lack of physician manpower are reasonable by estimating the projected supply and demand of physicians by 2023 based on scenarios involving their productivity and number of working days. As a result, all scenarios indicated a projected oversupply, except for the scenario in which there are 255 working days and physicians’ productivity is the same as that of 2018. Even in scenario three, in which there are 255 working days and physicians’ productivity is the same as that of 2018, an oversupply was projected from 2027. Standards regarding the number of physicians vary from country to country, as they are affected by various factors including medical systems, demographic structures, national health levels, medical infrastructures, accessibility, medical finance and geographical conditions. This issue can be seen as resulting from the unbalanced regional distribution of physicians rather than from an absolute shortage of the number of physicians. The trickle-down effect of expanding the medical student enrollment cannot solve the problem of the unbalanced regional distribution of physicians.