The 10 medical institutions that prescribed the most obesity drugs, including Wegovy and Mounjaro, averaged 191 times and 171 times the overall average number of prescriptions per institution, respectively. The concentration has raised suspicions that patients flocked to these clinics because doctors there write prescriptions even when patients do not meet body mass index criteria.
According to Drug Utilization Review data that Rep. Nam In-soon of the Democratic Party of Korea, a member of the National Assembly's Health and Welfare Committee, obtained from the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service, 10,272 medical institutions prescribed Wegovy from 2024 through the first half of this year. The average was 126 prescriptions per institution, the data showed on the 30th.
The figure that stands out is the average at the 10 highest-prescribing institutions: 24,104 prescriptions each, or about 191 times the overall average. Those 10 institutions accounted for 241,037 Wegovy prescriptions in total.
The concentration was even sharper at one clinic. A medical institution in Seoul's Jongno District, the single largest prescriber, wrote 58,149 Wegovy prescriptions over the period — about 462 times the overall average.
Mounjaro showed a similar pattern. Over the same period, 10,931 institutions prescribed the drug, averaging 168 prescriptions each.
The 10 highest-prescribing institutions, by contrast, wrote 287,677 prescriptions in total, or an average of 28,768 each — about 171 times the overall average. The top prescriber among them wrote 60,520 prescriptions, roughly 360 times the average.
Wegovy and Mounjaro are used to manage weight in patients with obesity. They are generally indicated for patients with a body mass index of 30 or higher, or overweight patients with a BMI of 27 or higher who also have weight-related conditions such as hypertension or diabetes.
"At some institutions, the front desk quotes product prices before the doctor has even seen the patient," an industry official said. "Because clinics are allowed to dispense injectables themselves, some make purchasing the product a condition of the consultation — a form of bundling."
