Proposal to establish a hospital dedicated for surgical essential medicines: a pilot project to strengthen the essential medical service in Korea

Background: In December 2022, the Ministry of Health and Welfare of the Korean government announced the “action plan for essential medicine (EM),” featuring that the regional emergency centers in tertiary general hospitals would be responsible for emergency medical care. There have been several limitations in regional emergency centers because of lacking operating rooms, intensive care units, and wards during weekdays and surgery staff during the nighttime and holidays. Thus, this plan may be insufficient to achieve the goal.Current Concepts: This paper proposes special hospitals for EM, especially essential surgery in which there are no scheduled surgeries and outpatient clinics during weekdays. At least half of wards should be reserved for EM patients because of lacking wards, and these empty wards should be financially rewarded. During weekends, a team of five surgical specialists works 16 h per day to prevent the so-called weekend or Friday effect because of lacking surgeons. The special hospital would operate 365 days and 24 hours with an EM surgeon pool in the digital twin system—virtual and real hospitals (so-called smart essential surgery metaverse hospital).Discussion and Conclusion: This paper proposes a pilot project to establish a smart essential surgery metaverse hospital to compare the efficiency of EM with the regional emergency centers in tertiary general hospitals.