The Taiwan Healthcare Reform Foundation yesterday urged the Ministry of Health and Welfare to work out a plan for large medical centers to reduce their outpatient services and channel their resources more into treating difficult cases or people who are critically ill.
Foundation chief executive officer Joanne Liu (劉淑瓊) said that based on the government standard of setting up a medical center for every 2 million people, the nation needs only 11 or 12 medical centers, but while it has 26 nationwide, many critically ill people still find it hard to get treatment at these often crowded centers.
Many of these medical centers tend to accept large numbers of cases of people with minor illnesses at their outpatient departments and to reduce refillable prescriptions for people with chronic illnesses, thus reducing available resources for the treatment of people who are critically ill, the foundation said.
Last year, an average of 14.5 percent of the cases treated at these centers’ outpatient departments were minor illness that can be treated at primary healthcare facilities, Liu said.
A survey of 19 medical centers conducted by the foundation showed that the number of refillable prescriptions for patients with chronic illnesses given in the past year accounted for only an average of 35.68 percent of the total prescriptions for such patients — an indication that many of these patients are unnecessarily taking up outpatient services, the foundation said.
“The large number of minor illness cases [treated at medical centers’ outpatient departments] cost the National Health Insurance Program about NT$900 million [US$27.55 million] each year,” foundation vice executive officer Chu Hsien-kuang (朱顯光) said.
If these cases were treated at primary hospitals or healthcare clinics, it could save the national health system about NT$400 million each year, he said.
“We hope the National Health Insurance Committee could establish a mechanism for medical centers to ‘go on a diet’ — by reducing funding for centers with an overly high ratio of minor illness treatment cases,” Liu said.
She also urged the public to avoid going to medical centers for treatment of minor diseases, so these centers can better serve their purpose of treating people who are critically ill or whose conditions are difficult to treat.
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