The National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA) plans to increase the cost of outpatient services at medical centers for patients who have not been referred from clinics, as well as emergency treatment at these centers for mild injuries to ensure compliance with the hospital classification system, health officials said yesterday.
Speaking at a meeting of the legislature’s Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee, Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Ho Chi-kung (何啟功) said that raising the co-payment fee for outpatient and emergency room visits could help improve the patient referral information system and change the public’s habit of seeking treatment at medical centers even for mild ailments.
Ho said that under the plan, the co-payment fee for patients transferred from a clinic or district hospital to a medical center or regional hospital would be reduced from NT$210 to NT$170 for medical centers, and from NT$140 to NT$100 for regional hospitals.
“However, for people seeking treatment at a medical center without referral, the co-payment fee for an outpatient visit would increase from NT$360 to NT$400,” he said.
Moreover, as the medical resources for treating critically ill patients at emergency rooms are very limited, especially at medical centers, Ho said that charges for people seeking treatment at a medical center’s emergency room for levels three to five medical conditions would be increased from NT$450 to NT$550, Ho said.
NHIA Director-General Lee Po-chang (李伯璋) said he hoped that people’s habits in seeking medical treatment would change with the new policy, adding that the ministry would provide assistance to basic-level hospitals so that they can provide examinations that only regional hospitals or medical centers provide at present.
He said that the agency has not set a specific date set for the policy’s implementation, but believes it is feasible and will be further discussed with specialists.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,