The Taiwan Health Reform Foundation (THRF) yesterday said there were four major problems that patients often meet in medical malpractice disputes, and urged that the mechanism for dealing with medical disputes be codified to solve the problems.
The four major problems are “difficult to obtain critical evidence, many traps within negotiations, no access to consultation and investigation and asymmetric professional information,” the foundation said, saying that the problems were revealed by patients or their family members through their complaints to the foundation over the past year.
It called for legislators not to be so fast to amend the Medical Care Act (醫療法) to protect doctors from punishment or to raise the threshold required for patients to file lawsuits over medical disputes, saying they should try to understand people’s difficulties first, as well as amend the laws to include a proper medical dispute resolution mechanism.
Foundation executive director Joanne Liu (劉淑瓊) said the foundation has received on average more than 400 medical dispute complaints a year over the past 11 years, and according to a researcher’s estimate, there are more than 18,000 people involved in medical disputes each year that do not know how to exercise their rights.
Between 20 percent and 30 percent of the 53 people who asked for the foundation’s assistance said they had difficulties applying for medical records, and about 60 percent said they thought the medical records they received were incomplete or altered, Liu said.
Many hospitals lack dispute resolution procedures for negotiations or filing complaints, and “some hospitals use the method of stalling for time, using various excuses, and sometimes even run out the six-month time limit for filing complaints,” she added.
She said a survey done by the Bureau of Health Promotion this year showed that only 14 percent of respondents knew how and where to file complaints when a medical dispute occurs, and about 60 percent said their complaints to the hospital were unresolved.
In addition, the foundation’s survey showed that many people demanded only an apology and the truth, and up to 98 percent of respondents said that what they needed the most was professional consultation and investigation to clarify the problem. Liu said that at present, many people had no choice but to file a lawsuit to receive professional investigation commissioned by the court.
Up to 94 percent of respondents said that they hoped the government could assist them with administrative investigations, she added.
In response, Department of Health official Hsu Ming-neng (許銘能) said that the proposal to amend the act was not meant to waive the criminal liability of doctors, but to make the punishment on doctors more reasonable so that they are made responsible only for severe or deliberate negligence.
“As for the patients, the department has drafted an act for medical dispute resolutions and medical dispute compensation, and sent it to the Executive Yuan for review,” he said, adding that it was likely to be sent for legislative review in the coming month.
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS