The Ministry of Health and Welfare selected 56 training hospitals to take part in the "2026 training environment innovation support program." The total support comes to 95.3 billion won.
The ministry said on the 1st that it evaluated 92 training hospitals that applied for the program and ultimately selected 56. Twenty-four are in the greater Seoul area and 32 are outside the metropolitan area.
The training environment innovation support program provides funding such as stipends for supervising specialists and education operating costs for interns and residents in eight specialties: internal medicine, surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics and adolescents, emergency medicine, cardiothoracic surgery, neurology, and neurosurgery.
This year, unlike last year, support recipients were chosen by evaluating the training performance of training hospitals. The ministry formed an evaluation panel with the Training Environment Evaluation Committee, the residents' association, medical education experts, the Korea Council of Teaching Hospitals, and the Korean Academy of Medical Sciences, and conducted on-site and document evaluations in May–June.
A total of 95.3 billion won will be provided to the selected hospitals depending on the size of their residency programs. The funds were allocated as 49.0 billion won for the metropolitan area and 46.3 billion won for non-metropolitan areas. The amount per hospital varies based on participating departments and the number of residents.
The ministry said it allocated similar support levels to the metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas to expand support for regional training hospitals. For large training hospitals with more than 100 residents, it limited the increase in funding to prevent support from concentrating on a few hospitals.
For hospitals excluded from this year's program and those wishing to participate, the ministry will support education and consulting to strengthen training capacity and is also considering reflecting training environment improvement results in next year's evaluation.
Meanwhile, in an anonymous survey the ministry conducted in April of this year of 354 residents who participated in last year's program, respondents said the supervising specialist system helped education, while also raising the view that disparities in education due to supervising specialists should be reduced.