In an attempt to solve the “physician drain” plaguing medical divisions treating acute, severe and complicated diseases, NT$5.05 billion (US$166.4 million) has been allocated to increase the fee payments made to these fields, the National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA) said yesterday.
To keep physicians from leaving the five divisions suffering an exodus of healthcare workers — internal medicine surgery; gynecology and obstetrics; pediatrics; and emergency care — the administration said it has adjusted the National Health Insurance (NHI) fee schedule to beef up the payments made to doctors in these sectors.
NHIA official Lee Chun-fu (李純馥) said that a total of 516 diagnostic categories in the five divisions stand to benefit from the adjustment, with surgery seeing the greatest increase.
“Internal medicine is to receive a NT$809 million hike in fees, with NT$1.505 billion allotted for surgery, NT$669 million for pediatrics, NT$992 million for gynecology and obstetrics, and NT$1.071 billion for emergency care,” she said.
Of the 516 diagnostic categories to be granted higher fees, 454 are operations, 46 are medical interventions and six are related to anesthesia, according to the NHIA.
The jump in payments being made for surgical procedures such as bronchoscopic removal of tracheobronchial foreign bodies is as high as 175 percent, the administration said.
Within the emergency care division, the three most urgent categories in the Triage and Acuity Scale are to receive fee raises. Level one cases — which are the most critical — will be granted an 80 percent increase in fees, with those in the second level slated to get 32 percent and third-level cases set for a 19 percent hike.
In obstetrics and gynecology, an upward fee adjustment of 119 percent has been granted to obstetricians taking care of women having their second child in a natural birth after having their first via a C-section, among other changes.
In pediatrics, 151 diagnosis categories are to benefit from the budget increase, the administration said.
Lee said the NHIA has informed the hospitals of the adjustments and requested them to dole out payment to physicians accordingly.
The administration will take steps to examine whether and how the distribution has been done at an appropriate time, she added.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods