Advising on permits under the Medical Service Act and the Building Act for relocating a general hospital's funeral hall

A medical corporation operating a general hospital sought to relocate its funeral hall to an annex across the road from the hospital's main building to solve a lack of space at the existing funeral hall.

The building to which the hall was to be moved was already recognized and operating as an ancillary facility of the general hospital, a dialysis center. However, because the site was located in a Type 2 general residential zone, questions arose as to whether the funeral hall could be relocated there and what permit procedures would apply.

Attorney Jaehoon Lee reviewed the statutes and administrative interpretations on relocating the facilities of a medical institution, and prepared requests for statutory interpretation to the relevant government agencies.

The main issues were whether buildings on different lots, separated by a road, could be recognized as facilities belonging to a single medical institution, and whether relocating the funeral hall to an annex already recognized as an ancillary facility of the existing medical institution could be handled as an amendment to the institution's establishment permit.

Further questions were whether a hospital funeral hall qualifies both as an ancillary facility of a medical institution under the Medical Service Act and as a medical facility under the Building Act, and whether it would be subject to the building restrictions that apply to a separate funeral hall use in a Type 2 general residential zone.

Attorney Lee reviewed the Medical Service Act's restrictions on opening duplicate medical institutions and its facility standards, the rules on ancillary businesses of medical corporations, and the classification of building uses under the Building Act.

In particular, he analyzed how the annex had come to be recognized as an ancillary facility of the general hospital, the distance and positional relationship between the main building and the annex, and how the existing funeral hall had been established, in order to assess whether relocating the funeral hall was legally possible.

He also researched court decisions on locating a medical institution's facilities separately and the Ministry of Health and Welfare's prior official interpretations, and drafted requests for statutory interpretation to be submitted to the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Ministry of Government Legislation on whether a funeral hall qualifies as a medical facility, the applicable building restrictions and the amendment permit procedure.