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Busan Metropolitan City Announces Vision for “Busan-Style Integrated Care”: Mayor Park Heong-joon Pledges a 15-Minute Care City Where Residents Can Live Healthily and Happily in the Place They Call Home

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Busan Metropolitan City (Mayor Park Heong-joon) announced that it will hold the “Busan-Style Integrated Care Vision Declaration Ceremony” today (March 10) at 2:00 p.m. in the City Hall Grand Auditorium to present its policy vision and implementation direction for realizing “Busan, a 15-minute care city where citizens can live healthily and happily in the place they call home.”

The ceremony has been prepared to proactively respond to the Integrated Support Act for Local Care including Medical and Long-Term Care (abbreviated as the Integrated Care Support Act), which will come into effect on March 27, and to systematically prepare for expanding care demands resulting from structural societal changes such as entry into a super-aged society and the increase in single-person households.

In the past, care services have often been provided separately across sectors such as healthcare, long-term care, welfare, and housing, which has led to concerns about gaps during the transition back to daily life after hospital discharge and insufficient linkage between services.

To overcome these limitations, the city plans to establish an integrated support system encompassing “identification–planning–linkage–provision–monitoring,” thereby fully operating a community-based care model that ensures a smooth transition from hospital to home and from treatment to daily life.

Approximately 700 participants will attend the ceremony, including Mayor Park Heong-joon, members of the City Council, district and county leaders, related public institutions, private welfare and medical organizations, frontline workers, and citizens.

Key institutions in the care sector—including the National Health Insurance Service, the National Pension Service, the Association of Social Welfare Centers, Home-Based Elderly Support Service Centers, Local Self-Reliance Centers, and Long-Term Care Home Medical Centers—will also attend to reaffirm their commitment to cooperation.

The ceremony will proceed in the following order: a progress report, presentation of the Busan-Style Integrated Care vision, the signing of memorandums of understanding (MOUs) among institutions along with a performance segment, and a commemorative photo session.

In particular, Mayor Park Heong-joon, care recipients, and frontline workers will jointly take the stage to discuss the necessity and roles of integrated care while presenting the Busan-Style Integrated Care vision. They will also introduce the importance of care, the roles of participating institutions, and life-oriented services, expressing their commitment from the field.

“Busan-Style Integrated Care” is a community-centered care policy that integrates and coordinates medical, long-term care, and welfare services, aiming to realize a “15-minute care city” where every citizen can enjoy a healthy and happy life in the place they live.

Any citizen in need of care can use the service. Busan Metropolitan City has expanded eligibility for cost support from households with incomes at or below 70 percent of the median income to those at or below 100 percent of the median income. In addition, the city has introduced improvements to residential environments and home-visit exercise services as city-specific services, expanding to a total of eight specialized services, which will be provided in an integrated manner alongside 30 nationwide common services.

The eight city-specific services include: safe care support for discharged patients, hospital accompaniment services, end-of-life accompaniment services, household assistance, meal support, training and support for care workers, residential environment improvement, and home-visit exercise services.

The city will also expand the number of Long-Term Care Home Medical Centers from 10 to 28 and increase the number of hospitals linked to discharged patient services to 82. Through these measures, Busan will strengthen the home-visit medical service system connected with medical institutions for seniors with limited mobility and patients requiring recovery after discharge, promoting a transition to a community-based health management system.

In particular, the city plans to provide community-complete medical care and community-based care services by utilizing city-specialized institutions such as Home-Based Elderly Support Service Centers and Community Health Centers. The number of service beneficiaries is expected to increase from 15,000 to 50,000.

In addition, the city plans to promote a pilot project in which long-term care facilities and welfare centers collaborate to provide integrated services for seniors residing in care facilities, thereby supporting their return to the community.

Following the vision presentation, major institutions—including the Busan Regional Headquarters of the National Health Insurance Service (Busan–Ulsan–Gyeongnam Region), the Busan Regional Headquarters of the National Pension Service, the Busan Social Service Agency, the Association of Welfare Centers, and the Home-Based Elderly Welfare Association—will sign a memorandum of understanding related to Busan-Style Integrated Care.

Through the agreement, the participating institutions pledge to actively cooperate in areas such as sharing information for identifying service recipients, collaborative case management, strengthening the linkage of medical, long-term care, and welfare services, and cooperating on service quality management and training.

Once Busan-Style Integrated Care is fully implemented, the procedural inconvenience and service gaps that citizens in need of care have experienced are expected to be significantly reduced.

Previously, citizens had to apply separately and receive individual consultations for medical, long-term care, and welfare services. In the future, consultation, application, and care planning will all be handled at once through integrated service counters centered at the eup, myeon, and dong administrative units.

As medical institutions and the community care system become connected, necessary services such as home-visit medical treatment, visiting nursing care, and meal support will be provided without interruption, and the linkage of public and private resources is expected to minimize blind spots in care services.

Mayor Park Heong-joon stated, “Care is no longer solely the responsibility of individuals or families; it is now a shared responsibility that the entire community must carry together. The core value of Busan-Style Integrated Care is to move from hospital to home, from treatment to daily life, and from fragmented services to integrated support.”

He added, “Each entity has a different role—the public corporations identify those in need, the eup, myeon, and dong units connect services, the Social Service Agency provides specialized support, Home Medical Centers deliver healthcare, and local institutions and care workers provide daily living support—but the goal is the same. We will complete Busan as a 15-minute care city where citizens can live healthily and happily in the place they call home.”

Mayor Park further emphasized, “Busan-Style Integrated Care is a collective commitment created together by the public sector, private sector, medical and welfare institutions, and local residents. With ‘care that preserves dignity in the place people call home’ as our core value, Busan Metropolitan City will take full responsibility to ensure that today’s declaration leads to real changes in the daily lives of every citizen.”