Bahk Eun-ji has been with The Korea Times since 2012, building a career across multiple desks. She began at the Business Desk, where she conducted in-depth interviews with key figures in Korea's corporate world. Later, she moved to the Politics & City Desk, focusing on education policy and social affairs. She later served as team leader of the digital content team, leading curation efforts on the newspaper’s homepage and reshaping print stories for social media audiences to enhance digital reach. Now back on the Politics Desk, she covers the National Assembly and the Ministry of National Defense, with a renewed focus on political developments.
Measures sought to root out 'ghost surgery'
Lee Na-geum, mother of Kwon Dae-hee who died from “ghost surgery” in September 2016, protests in front of the National Assembly, Seoul, April 8, to call for CCTV installation in hospital operating rooms. Kwon died while receiving jaw surgery done by a doctor operating on multiple patients at once. /Courtesy of Korea Alliance of Patients Organization
By Bahk Eun-ji
By Bahk Eun-ji
Doctors who employ people without medical licenses to perform “ghost surgery” will face prison terms, according to the health ministry and Rep. Kim Sang-hee of the Democratic Party of Korea, Sunday.
The ruling party lawmaker submitted a revision bill to the Medical Act recently in an effort to secure patients' safety and rights by eradicating ghost surgery, a practice where a patient's surgeon is replaced with an unlicensed employee or other person in the operating theater without the patient's knowledge after anesthesia is administered.
The revision plan follows several cases where patients died after receiving surgery from unqualified people, including a medical equipment salesman.
According to the revision bill, doctors will face up to three years in prison or 30 million won ($25,460) in fines if they allow unlicensed people to perform medical activity or have a medical staff member carry out any procedure beyond their legal qualification.
Currently, such doctors are not being punished ― only the "ghost surgeons" can get up to five years in prison or 50 million won in fines. Punishments for doctors include license suspension or up to one year of a hospital shutdown.
The lawmaker also proposed another revision bill to suspend the business or revoke the license of companies manufacturing, importing, selling or leasing medical devices if officials of the companies order or urge sales staff to perform ghost surgery on behalf of “client” doctors.
In May last year, an orthopedic surgeon in Busan ordered a medical device salesman to perform shoulder surgery, and the patient died. At another orthopedics hospital in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, a patient died while receiving spine surgery by a medical device salesman in November. Another patient there died after surgery by a doctor whose license had been revoked.
After the series of accidents, the Korean Medical Association, a doctors' group, announced self-reform measures, demanding strong punishment for surgeons and hospitals that violate the Medical Service Act and abandon medical ethics.
Patients' groups have also called for the protection of patients' rights to ensure safe surgery, such as installing surveillance cameras inside operating rooms to prevent ghost surgery.
“Medical institutions can save on huge labor costs if they make unlicensed medical device salespeople perform surgery instead of surgeons, but it is the patients who are harmed,” said Ahn Ki-jong, president of the Korea Alliance of Patients Organization. Ahn urged hospitals to install surveillance cameras inside operating rooms.
The group also called on the authorities to name the doctors and hospitals caught for ghost surgery and to take administrative action.