How to cope with the demand of elderly society for health care in Korea: Oriental medicine policy options

초록

Background and Aims: Since 1990`s, the Korean society, experiencing the low fertility and aging society, has been confronting with the threats in health care sector. The threats are the increases in the demand for health care, health care financial burden, and so on. In particular, the change of disease pattern and aging population result in the increases patients` demand for not only western medical services but also oriental medical services and complimentary medicine. Recently, the increases in availability of oriental medical services and the health care resources related to oriental medicine are raising some issues and conflicts in the Korean health sector. These circumstances required policy makers, central and local government, and public health sector to develop health policies related to oriental medicine and interface or integrate of traditional Korean medicine and Western medicine. For the near future, these issues will probably remain the focus of integration of traditional Korean medicine and Western medicine in public health sector. To cope with the threats in health care sector, one of the opportunities is to scale-up the public role of traditional Korean medical services. The main purpose of this study was to develop policy options to scale-up the public role of traditional Korean medical services for the future society. The research questions are: what are the trends and problems in traditional Korean medical sector and interface of traditional Korean medical sector and Western medical sector; what are the causes of or associated factors to the problems in the both sectors; how to cope with the problems and how to resolve the causes?; what are the health policy directions and its strategies that the government should take to cope with the future demand and the burden on health care sector? Methods: In order to do this, this study explores the trends and issues in various ways using contents analysis of existing data and documents related to traditional Korean medicine and health policy. Results: The results of this study are as follows. In order to scale-up the public role of traditional medicine, this research offered health policy directions for traditional Korean medicine in response to a change environment of health care sector. There are four directions to be addressed: 1) the development of and investment in public oriental medicine infra-structure; 2) the development of public policy on oriental medicine and interface between Western medicine and traditional Korean medicine; 3) scientification, industrialization, and globalisation of traditional Korean medicine; 4) the expansion of academic exchange between Western medicine and traditional Korean medicine. Conclusions: The strategies to implement the health policies are: enhancing the role and the function of traditional Korean medicine in health care sector; networking private and public traditional Korean medical services; integrating western and traditional Korean medicine through practice, education and research in public health sector; setting the role of public traditional Korean medicine to establish lifelong health management system. Finally, we discussed the public role of traditional Korean medicine for primary and secondary care, how traditional Korean medicine could be integrated into public health centers and public hospitals, and the strategies to scale-up the public role of traditional Korean medical services for the future society.