Next year’s drug addiction treatment pilot project… Children's rehabilitation project extended for 3 years

(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Seongho Seong = The government will promote a pilot project to support treatment of drug addicted patients starting in January of next year.

The children's rehabilitation medical institution, which has been conducting a pilot project, decided to extend the project period by three years.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare held the 19th Health Insurance Policy Deliberation Committee (Health Care Review) on the 28th and discussed the performance evaluation agenda of the pilot project to support treatment of drug addicted patients and the second pilot project for designation and operation of children's rehabilitation medical institutions.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare plans to first prepare a compensation plan for drug addiction (price set by health insurance) to help treat drug addiction patients.

If drug addiction receives appropriate treatment at an early stage, recurrence can be prevented and social costs such as crime and medical expenses can be reduced.

However, drug addiction is often accompanied by complex diseases, making treatment difficult, and patient management requires a lot of resources such as manpower and time, so it has been pointed out that separate compensation is needed for professional treatment by medical institutions.

Accordingly, through a pilot project, the Ministry of Health and Welfare plans to prepare a compensation plan so that drug addicted patients can continue to receive management through rehabilitation institutions such as the Addiction Management Integrated Support Center even after returning to the community after receiving intensive and recovery treatment according to the level of addiction and treatment stage.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare will designate those that applied among the 11 regional treatment and protection institutions as pilot institutions and promote the project for three years.

In the case of the children's rehabilitation medical institution pilot project, whose second phase ends this year, the project period will be extended by three years and continue until the end of 2029.

The Children's Rehabilitation Medical Institution Pilot Project is a project that designates hospitals and clinics equipped with professional personnel and facilities so that children with disabilities under the age of 18 can receive rehabilitation treatment in a timely manner in their residential area, and applies intensive rehabilitation treatment fees depending on the patient's illness, age, etc.

A total of 39 locations (19 in the metropolitan area and 20 in the non-metropolitan area) participated in the second pilot project, and as of last year, approximately 3.46 million professional rehabilitation treatments were provided to 9,260 patients.

Compared to 2024, the beginning of the second phase of the project, the number of rehabilitation medicine specialists per institution increased from 3.0 to 3.2, and the number of physical and occupational therapists increased from 65.4 to 77.4.

However, there are differences in the use of specialized rehabilitation by region, such as no organizations participating in the project in some regions, and the need to improve the fee for intensive rehabilitation treatment for children has also been raised.

Accordingly, the Ministry of Health and Welfare plans to increase the number of institutions participating in the 3rd pilot project to a maximum of 56 (up to 68 including public children's rehabilitation medical hospitals and centers) and improve fees according to the age of patients.