Despite 92 calls to ER, young heart attack patient dies

Paramedics wheel a patient into the emergency room of a Seoul-based hospital on Sunday. (Yonhap)

A woman in her 30s in cardiac arrest died last week due to delays in finding an emergency room to treat her during the Chuseok holidays, a government report revealed Monday.

It was found that emergency medical technicians in Busan called hospitals in the area 92 times to find a ER that could treat her, but failed to locate while the patient was suffering multiple heart attacks, according to the data submitted to Rep. Youn Kun-young of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea.

The woman suddenly began experiencing convulsions and called 119 at 2:15 a.m. on Sept. 17, falling unconscious by the time the paramedics arrived. Though she was in a level-1 life-threatening condition, she was turned down by 10 hospitals in Busan, due to them being unable to treat neurological issues at the time. The paramedics brought her to nearby Haedong Hospital, where her condition temporarily improved with CPR and medication.

But her condition required treatment from a legally-designated superior general hospital -- defined by a larger staff and better equipment. Despite dozens of calls by both the 119 call center and the emergency workers, none of the qualified hospitals could take her due to a lack of medical personnel.

She suffered a total of four cardiac arrests in the process, and ultimately was pronounced dead at 6:25 a.m.

This tragedy is the among a number of recent cases where patients were unable to receive the urgent treatment they needed due to the shortage of doctors, amid the monthslong mass walkout of interns and resident physicians across the country protesting the government's plan to hike the medical school admissions quota by 2,000.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare claimed there was "no major confusion" in ER operations during the holidays, but according to the report, Korea is suffering from a severe lack of medical personnel amid the continued standoff.

Recent National Fire Agency data showed that ambulances carrying urgent patients were turned away by hospitals 2,645 times between January and June this year. Of those, 1,081 were because of a lack of doctors.

By Yoon Min-sik(minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com)