Kyungpook National University Hospital treatment support device failure repeats… Poor patient personal information management

The National Assembly Health and Welfare Committee’s inspection report pointed out… Hospital side: “There were some shortcomings.”

(Daegu = Yonhap News) Reporter Park Se-jin = Criticism has emerged that Kyungpook National University Hospital is experiencing repeated failures in treatment support equipment and is lax in managing patients' personal information.

People Power Party lawmaker Choi Bo-yoon criticized the National Assembly Health and Welfare Committee on the 8th during a government audit, saying, "Kyungpook National University Hospital is experiencing repeated failures despite investing significant maintenance costs in the medical image archiving and transmission system (PACS)."

He continued, "PACS is a core medical infrastructure that displays X-ray or CT results and must never stop," and pointed out, "Even though 120 million won in maintenance costs were invested in 2023, there were 6 failures in 2024 and 4 failures in 2025, which became a problem."

He said, “An emergency response system must be established to ensure that emergency and critical care is not interrupted.”

People Power Party lawmaker Lee So-hee criticized Kyungpook National University Hospital by disclosing the fact that it was in a situation where patient personal information in its self-audit results disclosed on the public audit portal was in danger of being leaked.

Representative Lee pointed out, "Although the patient's personal information is blacked out in the (audit) report, we confirmed that if the relevant part is copied and pasted elsewhere, the personal information is exposed as is."

Representative Lee said, “Until the lawmaker’s office pointed it out on the 3rd, anyone could download the audit results, and only 543 patients’ names were revealed.”

Kyungpook National University Hospital Director Yang Dong-heon responded, "The server itself has double and triple PACS backup systems, and hospital regulations stipulate that recovery can be done unconditionally within 2 hours, but we are working to ensure immediate recovery."

In addition, they responded that they had notified all 543 patients whose personal information may have been leaked according to the self-audit report, and bowed their heads, saying, "There were some shortcomings."