Emergency Room vs. Emergency Medical Center: What’s the Difference?

# Right to treatment without an emergency medical center, the bare face of local emergency medical care

Pain that squeezes the chest or sudden accidents come without warning. In these desperate moments, the first place that comes to mind is the emergency room of a nearby hospital. However, the current reality within the medical treatment area in Ongjin-gun, Dong-gu, Jung-gu is harsh. Although the above region forms a single medical area, there is not a single regional emergency medical center and only emergency medical institutions are dispersed.

Although emergency medical institutions exist within the medical area, the actual emergency medical care delivery system is close to a ‘vacancy’ and does not function properly. This is because there is only a regional emergency medical center that can accommodate severe emergency patients that can determine life or death, and there is not a single ‘regional emergency medical center’ that plays an intermediate role in emergency treatment.

Therefore, the current emergency medical system in our area is operated centered on ’emergency medical institutions’ that only provide basic treatment. On the surface, it appears that medical services are provided, but when you look into the reality, it is a dangerous structure.

Emergency medical care is not simply a matter of ‘is there a hospital nearby?’ It is a question of who, when, where, and how to treat severe emergency patients, and this is directly related to life. Regional emergency medical centers serve as key hubs in this delivery system. This is because 24-hour specialist presence, intensive care capacity, connection to surgery and intensive care units, and power coordination with other medical institutions are concentrated.

The problem is that these structural limitations can never be overcome through the efforts of field medical staff alone. No matter how hard emergency medical institutions do their best, the limitations of legally and institutionally granted functions and infrastructure are clear. In the end, responsibility lies not with medical institutions but with the policies and administration that designed the local emergency medical system.

# Gaps in the delivery system, the damage falls entirely on the residents

The key to the emergency medical care delivery system is to ensure rapid distribution to the appropriate level of medical institution according to the patient’s condition. However, if there is no high-level regional emergency medical center like the one in our neighborhood, the ‘regional tragedy’ in which survival rates vary depending on the region of residence becomes a reality due to the deepening medical gap between regions. This makes the natural right to life enjoyed by residents of the metropolitan area or large cities a distant reality in our region.

The bigger concern is that the longer this vacuum lasts, the more the trust of local residents will collapse. If the perception that ‘in case of an emergency, we have to go to another region anyway’ becomes entrenched, local medical care will inevitably decline. This is not just a medical problem, but also leads to the collapse of the local safety net.

# Now is the time to build a ‘region-complete’ emergency medical network.

The government and local governments must establish a practical ‘regional complete emergency medical system’. We need to establish an emergency medical network within our local medical area and strengthen hotlines between hospitals in the region to upgrade the emergency medical system and the system for transporting emergency patients.

Where you live should not determine your life or death. This extremely obvious proposition is still a desperate wish in our neighborhood. The broken back of the emergency medical delivery system must be repaired before it is too late. Any further delay in creating a safety net to protect the lives of our families cannot be tolerated.

Emergency medical care is public infrastructure that cannot be accessed solely through market logic. The fact that there is no emergency medical center in a certain area is also a sign that the residents of that area are not receiving equal life protection. Even at this very moment, emergency patients occur. We should no longer waste time with the easy decision that ‘there are emergency medical facilities, so it is enough’. What is needed is not the ‘existence’ of emergency medical services, but a properly functioning emergency medical care delivery system.