With the Integrated Care Support Act set to take effect the following day, the city of Busan has essentially completed building its "Busan-model integrated care" system and is fully launching a community-based care model encompassing medical, welfare and housing services.
Busan Metropolitan City announced on the 26th that it had completed a final review of its entire integrated care system ahead of the law's implementation on the 27th. The Integrated Care Support Act is a system designed to provide elderly, disabled and other citizens who have difficulty with daily living integrated medical, nursing, welfare and housing services in their existing places of residence.
Ahead of the law's implementation, the city had proactively laid the groundwork through its own program, "Busan, Together Care." The city accumulated field experience by operating services such as post-discharge patient care and hospital escort assistance. Through this latest review, the city has upgraded the system to a level capable of immediate operation upon the law's enactment, officials said.
The city unified previously fragmented care services into a single integrated window centered on local eup, myeon and dong offices, enabling consultation, application and care plan development to be handled in one visit. Eligibility criteria were expanded from 70% or below of median income to 100% or below, and eight specialized services including residential environment improvements and home-visit exercise programs were added to broaden the scope of support.
The city also signed an agreement with the Busan Metropolitan City Hospital Association and established a discharge-patient referral system with 53 hospitals with 100 or more beds. The plan is to identify care needs before discharge and immediately connect patients with the community care system, reducing the "revolving door phenomenon" of readmissions.
Expert consultations and on-site inspections were conducted in parallel. Feedback from integrated support council meetings was incorporated to streamline operational processes spanning from identifying eligible recipients to post-care management. District-level meetings were also held to complete advance reviews of staffing arrangements and civil complaint response systems.
If the model takes root successfully, citizens are expected to notice significant changes. Application procedures that previously required visits to multiple agencies will be consolidated into a single window, and seamless provision of home-visit medical care, nursing, meal support and housekeeping assistance is expected to substantially reduce gaps in care.
Busan Mayor Park Hyung-jun said, "The starting point is ensuring that citizens do not have to leave their familiar homes and communities even when they become ill or need care," adding, "We have now entered a stage where citizens will feel the changes in their daily lives."
