Last year, more than half of the patients who received outpatient treatment were found to have spent less than 5 minutes with the doctor during their visit. Patients waited an average of about 18 minutes after registration and received 8 minutes of treatment.
According to the results of the ‘2023 Medical Service Experience Survey’ conducted by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs at the request of the Ministry of Health and Welfare on July 24th to September 22nd last year, of the respondents who received outpatient services, 55.0% reported that the doctor’s treatment time was less than 5 minutes.
The most common response for the duration of the doctor’s visit was 4-5 minutes at 37.4%, followed by 1-3 minutes at 17.6%. This reflects the reality of the commonly used term ‘3-minute consultation’ to criticize the excessively short treatment time.
Only 28.3% of outpatient patients received treatment for 6-10 minutes, and the response for treatment lasting 11-30 minutes was only 16.0%. The average outpatient treatment time for all respondents was 8.0 minutes.
On average, patients waited 17.9 minutes after registration to receive 8 minutes of treatment during their outpatient visits. For inpatients, the average length of stay was 7.5 days, with 48.1% admitted on the same day without prior reservation.
Among inpatients, 27.1% were admitted to integrated nursing care units, with a high satisfaction rate of 97.3%. The survey also revealed that 76.7% of the respondents trust South Korea’s healthcare system, and 75.8% expressed satisfaction with it.