National Health Insurance Administration data showed that more than 44,000 people received medical treatments covered by National Health Insurance (NHI) more than 90 times last year and have been listed for follow-up guidance by the administration.
A 31-year-old Kaohsiung man last year visited 26 clinics or hospitals 503 times, the highest number of annual NHI-covered visits last year.
Administration data show that each person on the NHI scheme pays for an average of 15 hospital visits per year.
The administration in 2013 started tracking people who visit hospitals more than 90 times per year so it could help people understand how to use healthcare services.
Administration official Lin Bao-feng (林寶鳳) said the Kaohsiung man had a car accident last year and a chronic allergy and often visited hospitals or clinics for injections to relieve his allergies.
“The injections offered short-term benefits, so he sometimes had to get another antihistamine shot four hours after the first one,” she said, adding that a pharmacist who visited the man reported that he might have developed an antihistamine dependence.
A 55-year-old visited hospitals 446 times last year due to chronic illness, including contact dermatitis, urticaria and eczema, Lin said, adding that the administration has improved communications with these people.
Lin said the administration will contact people who visit hospitals often by telephone or home visits.
About 60 percent of people contacted reduce their visits, but many people become frequent visitors to clinics and hospitals every year, she added.
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,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
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: