Chuncheon Municipal Geriatric Hospital has been unable to restart specialist rehabilitation treatment since April after its rehabilitation-medicine doctor resigned. The hospital has tried to recruit a replacement but has not filled the position as specialist pay has climbed sharply, with offers around 400 million won a year and some recruitment listings reaching about 500 million won.
The staffing problem is already affecting patients rather than remaining a recruitment issue on paper. A dementia ward that had recently opened was also forced to close after roughly 50 days because the hospital could not maintain the necessary medical staffing.
A staffing shortage becomes a service shortage
The case shows how regional public hospitals can lose services even when facilities exist, simply because they cannot compete for scarce specialists. The practical question is whether local and national health authorities can create staffing or compensation arrangements that restore rehabilitation and other essential services without pushing financially constrained public hospitals into an unsustainable bidding war for doctors.