Historically, device reimbursement in Korea, when available, has been about 50% of what it is in the West. The Korean Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRA) is planning to regroup medical device categories that are listed for reimbursement. The first regrouping, done between 2010-2013, regrouped a total of around 16,000 devices. This second grouping, will reclassify around 3,000 products. The HIRA believes that the regroupings will make the reimbursement process more fair and transparent in the hopes that medical device companies will be better equipped to predict categorizations and reimbursement structures when launching new products.
