By Bahk Eun-ji
The Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRA) shared that Korea’s effective and quick response to the COVID-19 outbreak was due to its robust healthcare system during an international meeting of global experts, Tuesday.
Kim Sun-min, the newly appointed president of HIRA, hosted the Working Party on Healthcare Quality and Outcomes (HCQO) under the auspices of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Given the unprecedented challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, the OECD HCQO meeting was held in the virtual world and dealt with health system readiness and responses to the outbreak.
During the meeting, Kim detailed the nation’s utilization of real-time healthcare resources and data to detect high-risk groups to prevent community spread in response to COVID-19. The government collected patient information centrally, and monitored the status of resources including negative pressure isolation rooms, masks and drug supplies, Kim said during a meeting.
“It was a meaningful time to share the current status of the healthcare system with OECD member countries and discuss the direction of healthcare quality management since the pandemic,” Kim said.
The OECD HCQO was started in 2001 to develop, collect and compare a set of indicators that reflect a robust picture of healthcare quality across countries using comparable data. The HCQO working party is made up of representatives of OECD member nations and international organizations such as the World Health Organization, the European Commission, the International Hospital Federation and ISQua.
Ninety experts from 33 countries including the United Kingdom, France, Japan and Canada participated in the meeting. HIRA has represented Korea in the working party since 2007 and Kim has been actively involved in the group since 2009. She was the first woman and Asian national elected to chair the HCQO Working Party in 2019, and won re-election this year.
