The National Health Insurance Service has named Kim Ji-young, 50, a preventive medicine specialist with expertise in medical cost and pricing analysis and in health insurance fee schedules and reimbursement, as head of its Health Insurance Research Institute. Kim, who had been serving as supervising physician at the Gangwon center of the Korea Industrial Health Association, was appointed effective the 22nd following an open recruitment process, the NHIS said on the 22nd. The institute's head oversees the organization's operations and research planning, along with research support and management across social insurance programs including national health insurance and long-term care insurance for older adults.
Kim graduated from Ewha Womans University with a degree in statistics before studying medicine at Eulji University. She went on to earn a master's degree in public health from Seoul National University's Graduate School of Public Health and a doctorate in medicine from Seoul National University, qualifying as a preventive medicine specialist in 2014.
After serving as a research fellow on the health technology assessment research team at the National Evidence-based Healthcare Collaborating Agency, she joined the NHIS in 2016. She subsequently held key posts including director of the Daejeon-Sejong-Chungcheong health support center, research fellow in the legal affairs office, and department head in the benefits strategy office and the big data operations office. From 2024 she worked as a section chief at the occupational and environmental medicine center of Hanil General Hospital, run by the KEPCO Medical Foundation, and since last year had served as supervising physician at the Korea Industrial Health Association's Gangwon center.
She built particular expertise in medical cost and pricing analysis and in health insurance fee schedules and reimbursement. She also took part as a researcher in the reimbursement subcommittee for the Ministry of Health and Welfare's research project on the second comprehensive national health insurance plan, supporting the development of health insurance policy.
"Drawing on a range of policy and field experience, I will pursue practical policy research across the social insurance system that people can feel in their daily lives," Kim said. "I will help the institute grow into a central pillar of health and welfare services for the public."
