NHIS President Kang Do-tae had the first meeting with heads of medical organizations for the successful signing of contracts on paid medical costs for 2023 at Seoul Garden Hotel on May 4.
Among those on hand at the meeting were Chairman Lee Pil-soo of Korea Medical Association, Chairman Yoon Dong-sup of Korean Hospital Association, Chairman Park Tae-geun of Korea Dental Association, Chairman Hong Joo-eui of the Association of Korean Medicine, and Chairman Choi Kwang-hoon of Korean Pharmaceutical Association.
NHIS Launches Project to Support Development of Mexico’s Long-Term Care System
National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) said in May that the NHIS began to undertake a project in support of the development of Mexico’s long-term care system.
The project was launched in earnest after NHIS signed a contract to carry out it with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) on May 16.
It is the first time that NHIS will transfer its experience on operating long-term care systems to the international society. It takes on significance that NHIS’s transfer of experiences have been expanded to the long-term care sector, on top of K-health insurance, the subject of global attention.
The latest project started as NHIS held an international seminar on a long-term care system in cooperation with IDB in June 2019 to introduce Korea’s long-term care system to Central and South America.
At that time, many nations, including Mexico and Costa Rica, had shown keen interest and follow-up exchange activities, such as international workshops and conferences, resulted in the Korean long-term care system’s entry into the international arena.
The project, to be carried out until next April, is designed to plan a long-term care system suiting Mexico by transferring Korea’s experiences and knowledge related to its long-term care system and support the establishment of policies.
The project’s major tasks include policy consulting services on the introduction of Mexico’s long-term care system, consulting services on nurturing long-term care manpower and building a management regime, and invitational training program designed to ramp up capabilities of the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) and long-term care policymakers.
Central and South America, including Mexico, are facing rising social and economic burden caused by the aging of their populations and a rise in chronic diseases.
Institutional options are badly needed to find solutions, experts say.
In particular, Mexico has already entered an aging society as the portion of the elderly aged 65 or more accounted for 7 percent of the nation’s total population in 2020.
The country has seen an increase in costs for treating chronic diseases such as ventricular vascular diseases and diabetes.
To cope with the issues, Mexico is discussing ways of overhauling laws and regimes with the goal of introducing a long-term care system by 2024.
The country requested for taking a cue from Korea’s example to establish a long-term care system.
NHIS is expected to suggest ways of solving problems Mexico will experience while introducing a system based on Korea’s example and conducting comprehensive consulting services ranging from managing of candidates to working-level areas, consulting services on nurturing of long-term care manpower and system management and training programs on the strengthening of manpower capabilities.
NHIS, a sole insurer of health insurance and long-term care, has implemented policy consulting and capability buildup projects to support the development of health insurance for developing countries, including Nepal and Indonesia, based on Korea’s experiences of achieving universal health covering for the past decade and knowhow on the operation of a health insurance regime.
The long-term care insurance system, which has evolved into one of Korea’s representative social security systems, is expected to establish itself as an international exemplary case based on international development cooperation experiences on health insurance the nation has accumulated.
Kang Sang-baek, head of the Global Cooperation Office at NHIS, said, “We will ramp up cooperation health and medical areas with IDB and Mexico by successfully completing the project, and we expect to spread the cooperation project model on long-term care to other Central and South American countries in the years to come.”
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