Medical professionals are calling on the government to avoid hasty policy decisions on healthcare fee restructuring without sufficient data verification and public deliberation.
The warning comes as the government prepares a major overhaul of "balanced fees" as part of its fourth relative value scale reform.
Members of the Korean Society for Laboratory Medicine's relative value task force recently held a series of meetings with the Ministry of Health and Welfare, according to medical industry sources on Monday. They conveyed concerns about the direction of medical fee adjustments and the methodology for calculating cost reimbursement rates for specimen testing.
The core message: fee adjustments affect the entire healthcare delivery system and require thorough verification and consensus rather than unilateral implementation of predetermined policies.
"Given our experience with major healthcare policies like medical school enrollment quotas being pushed through without adequate discussion, leading to expanded social conflict, this reform must be approached cautiously," a society official said. "The basic direction of fee adjustments should be structural reform that normalizes abnormalities, and the policy's purpose and necessity must be fully explained to the public throughout the process."
The society emphasized that particular care is needed in analyzing the foundational data for calculating cost reimbursement rates for specimen testing.
"Close examination is needed to determine whether the sample groups and data used for calculating cost reimbursement rates are sufficiently representative," the official said. "Consulting with relevant professional societies in the process of selecting institutions and conducting analysis would enhance the policy's validity and acceptance."
Specimen testing involves structural differences across healthcare facility types—from clinics to small and medium hospitals to tertiary hospitals—meaning the issue cannot be approached simply through the logic of "adjusting test frequency," the society argued. The reality that a significant portion of diagnostic reagents and equipment used domestically depends on products from global companies must also be considered.
The society expressed concern that cost reimbursement rates exceeding 100% could be used to justify further cuts, despite the government having already reduced specimen testing fees in 2017 and 2024.
"Re-verification is needed to determine whether cost calculations derived within a market structure dominated by global diagnostic companies are appropriate as a policy basis," the official said. "If fee cuts continue based on distorted cost data, this could become a serious obstacle to growth in the domestic in-vitro diagnostics industry, which is considered a key future growth engine for the nation."
The official added: "Within this structure, clinics and small to medium hospitals responsible for regional and primary care could find themselves at a relative disadvantage under the current specimen testing fee system. The impact of fee adjustments on the healthcare delivery system and regional healthcare must be considered together."