A Qualitative Case Study on Welfare Services for Vulnerable Classes in Public Hospitals: Focusing on the Seoul-type Citizen Empathy Emergency Room at Boramae Hospital

Abstract

This study explored the practical experience of the integrated health and medical welfare service program for the underprivileged in a public hospital called the Seoul-type Citizen Empathy Emergency Room. The Seoul-type Citizen Empathy Emergency Room project is meaningful in that it legally, institutionally, and practically prepared the discovery of the medically vulnerable and the establishment of a support system. Topics derived from specific research results include establishing a health and medical welfare cooperative system to expand the social safety net, discovering socially vulnerable groups and diversifying support routes, and strengthening medical publicity for stabilization and expansion of the Citizen Empathy Emergency Room project. The policy recommendations presented based on the research results require the expansion of the Citizen Empathy Emergency Room project, which is operated on a pilot basis in only five hospitals in Seoul, and it is necessary to provide sufficient human resources and build infrastructure. In addition, cooperation, linkage, and policy efforts are needed to establish an integrated social safety net for continuous health and medical welfare and to secure the public nature of medical care.