300 citizen panelists to shape future of regional, essential healthcare at overnight forum

The Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Medical Innovation Committee announced Thursday that they will hold a "Deliberative Forum on Reviving Regional and Essential Healthcare" at KINTEX in Goyang on Friday and Saturday.

The forum was organized to diagnose the root causes of the regional and essential healthcare crisis and to chart an effective course for medical reform based on public consensus and broad social agreement.

The 300-member citizen panel participating in the forum was selected with attention to gender, age, region and discussion topics to ensure public opinion is reflected in a balanced way in healthcare reform policy.

The panelists will take part in Medical Innovation Committee discussions in various ways from June through the end of the year, reviewing the government's policies to strengthen regional and essential healthcare from a user's perspective and proposing ways to improve them.

The two-day forum will feature expert presentations and small-group discussions, followed by a plenary session in which each group shares its findings.

The expert presentations and group discussion results will be livestreamed on the Ministry of Health and Welfare's YouTube channel. The small-group discussions, however, will be held in closed session to allow panelists to deliberate freely.

On the first day, Son Yeong-rae, head of the ministry's Medical Innovation Promotion Team, will present the government's policy direction for regional, essential and public healthcare, after which citizen panelists will begin substantive discussions on regional healthcare access.

The first session will focus on the scope of coverage for regional healthcare.

Under the theme "The minimum scope of regional healthcare supply as seen by the public," panelists will share views and seek common ground on what level of healthcare access should be guaranteed as a baseline for people living outside major cities.

The second session will address the conditions under which people use regional healthcare.

Under the theme "The level of regional hospital coverage the public wants," panelists will discuss what it would take for people to trust and use local hospitals, and examine whether current regional and essential healthcare policies adequately reflect those needs. The session will also gather input on policy support measures to encourage greater use of regional healthcare.

The day will close with a plenary sharing of results from the first and second session group discussions.

Each group will present its conclusions on the minimum scope of regional healthcare coverage and on measures to encourage the use of local hospitals. Panelists will draw on their own experiences to share diverse views and identify shared challenges.

The second day will focus on how healthcare should be supplied to ensure regional and essential care, and will produce recommendations on the key conditions needed for regional, essential and public healthcare policies to succeed.

The third session, on models for supplying regional and essential healthcare, will feature presentations by Na Baek-ju, a Medical Innovation Committee member and professor at Eulji University College of Medicine, and Park Jin-sik, a committee member and chairman of Sejong Hospital.

Na will propose a model centered on concentrated public investment in public hospitals to provide stable regional and essential healthcare, while Park will propose a model that assigns public-service roles to capable private hospitals to deliver regional and essential care more substantively.

After hearing both presentations, panelists will choose one of the two approaches, explain their reasoning and then engage in in-depth debate organized around each position.

The fourth session will focus on the criteria for successful regional, essential and public healthcare policy, and will produce a set of recommendations on the key conditions and direction needed for implementation.

Panelists will deliberate on the basis of sufficient information, and the citizen panel steering committee will analyze the resulting views and announce them in July. The steering committee will also report the deliberation results to the Medical Innovation Committee by the end of July, and the findings are expected to serve as a key reference in the committee's policy discussions and future reform efforts.

Minister of Health and Welfare Jeong Eun-kyeong said reviving regional and essential healthcare "is not a challenge the government can solve on its own — what matters most is pooling the wisdom of all members of society, including the public, the medical community and experts." She added that she hoped the forum would serve as "a meaningful opportunity for the public to think together about the direction of healthcare reform and build broader social consensus."

Medical Innovation Committee Chairman Jeong Ki-hyeon said public deliberation is "a process of social consensus-building in which differing views are respected and better alternatives are crafted together," adding that the committee would "do its utmost to ensure that the diverse opinions produced at this forum are carefully reviewed and translated into effective policy discussions to revive regional and essential healthcare."