Faced with potential personnel shortages and the need to free resources for critical care, the National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA) is hoping to significantly cut outpatient visits to bigger hospitals in the near future, NHIA Director-General Lee Po-chang (李伯璋) said yesterday.
The agency has set a goal of cutting outpatient visits to medical centers and regional hospitals by 10 percent over the next five years, Lee said.
Last year, there were 30.69 million outpatient visits to medical centers, up from 25.62 million in 2010, and 41.14 million outpatient visits to regional hospitals, up from 33.46 million in 2010.
If the goal is achieved, the rapid growth in outpatient visits to the two types of medical establishments seen over the past seven years could be reversed and would fall by a combined 7 million over the next five years, Lee said.
The nation has tried for more than a decade to institute a multi-tiered healthcare system designed to get the most out of its medical resources.
Under the system, the best-equipped medical facilities — medical centers and regional hospitals — are responsible for handling serious illnesses or critical cases while leaving less urgent or more routine cases to district hospitals and clinics.
The issue has taken on new urgency, because doctors will start to be covered by the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) in 2019, possibly cutting the amount of time they can work and creating a personnel shortage at major hospitals, Lee said.
With that in mind and to ensure that big hospitals have sufficient resources for critical and emergency care, the NHIA needs to channel outpatients to smaller healthcare facilities, Lee said.
The initiative would see doctors at medical centers and regional hospitals transfer patients diagnosed with minor ailments to district hospitals and clinics to avoid wasting medical resources, he said.
At the same time, patients with serious conditions who first visit district hospitals and clinics should be transferred to medical centers and regional hospitals, he said.
About 12 to 14 percent of outpatient cases at medical centers and 20 percent of those at regional hospitals involve basic medical care, such as respiratory infections, conjunctivitis, abrasions or fungal infections, Lee said.
In other words, about one in every five to eight outpatients may be using resources that would better serve people with more serious ailments, he said.
LEVERAGE: China did not ‘need to fire a shot’ to deny Taiwan airspace over Africa when it owns ‘half the continent’s debt,’ a US official said, calling it economic warfare The EU has raised concerns about overflight rights following the delay of President William Lai’s (賴清德) planned state visit to the Kingdom of Eswatini after three African nations denied overflight clearance for his charter at the last minute. Taiwanese allies Paraguay and Saint Kitts and Nevis, as well as several US lawmakers and the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) condemned China for allegedly pressuring the countries. Lai was scheduled to fly directly to Taiwan’s only African ally from yesterday to Sunday to celebrate the 40th anniversary of King Mswati III’s accession and his 58th birthday, but Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar suddenly revoked
The final batch of 28 M1A2T Abrams tanks purchased from the US arrived at Taipei Port last night and were transported to the Armor Training Command in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), completing the military’s multi-year procurement of 108 of the tanks. Starting at 12:10am today, reporters observed more than a dozen civilian flatbed trailers departing from Taipei Port, each carrying an M1A2T tank covered with black waterproof tarps. Escorted by military vehicles, the convoy traveled via the West Coast Expressway to the Armor Training Command, with police implementing traffic control. The army operates about 1,000 tanks, including CM-11 Brave Tiger
China on Wednesday teased in a video an aircraft carrier that could be its fourth, and the first using nuclear power, while making an allusion to Taiwan and vowing to further build up its islands, as it looks to boost maritime power, secure resources and bolster territorial claims. The video, issued on the eve of the 77th founding anniversary of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy, featured fictional officers with names that are homophones of three commissioned aircraft carriers, the Liaoning (遼寧), Shandong (山東) and Fujian (福建). Titled Into the Deep, it showed a 19-year-old named “Hejian” (何劍) joining the group, sparking
BIG YEAR: The company said it would also release its A12 chip the same year to keep a ‘reliable stream of new silicon technologies’ flowing to its customers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said its newest A13 chip is to enter volume production in 2029 as the chipmaker seeks to hold onto its tech leadership and demand for next-generation chips used in artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance-computing (HPC) and mobile applications. TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, also unveiled its A12 chip at its annual technology symposium in Santa Clara, California. The A12 chip, which features TSMC’s super-power-rail technology to provide backside power delivery for AI and HPC applications, is also to enter volume production in 2029, a year after the scheduled release of the A14 chip. The technology moves
RSS