The Bureau of National Health Insurance (BNHI) said earlier this week that starting this year, it will tighten its oversight of prescription drug distribution to reduce waste, paying special attention to those who often make repeated visits to different hospitals for the same kinds of medicines using National Health Insurance (NHI) benefits.
Patients with chronic illness are entitled to coverage of a three-month “consecutive drug prescription” by the NHI if their doctor considers the patient’s conditions stable, but some patients fail to take the prescribed medicines regularly, resulting in large quantities of leftover medication, the BNHI said. It also said some patients visit two or more hospitals to receive multiple sets of the same medication.
The bureau said it was mulling making those who waste NHI benefits reinstate part of the cost. It also aims to increase monitoring of patients who are prescribed more than 10 kinds of medication in one visit and institutes that prescribe more than five kinds of medication at once.
Consulting sessions will be conducted for patients who act in the above-mentioned ways to fully understand their needs and doctors will be required to check patients’ medication records, the bureau added.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching