Healthcare facilities are not allowed to offer discounts for medical treatment, including cosmetic procedures, the Taipei Department of Health said on Monday, urging people to pay expenses on each visit instead of prepaying for a discounted series.
With Mother’s Day approaching on Sunday, the department said that many cosmetic surgery clinics have been advertising special offers targeting women or their children.
Advertisements for Mother’s Day specials, such as NT$100 (US$3.24) cash back for spending NT$1,000 and entries in lotteries to win prizes for spending more than NT$30,000, posted on clinics’ Web sites, breach the Medical Act (醫療法), it said.
The act stipulates that healthcare facilities are prohibited from promoting medical services by offering discounts for group sales, direct sales, coupons and prepaid sessions, as well as free additional treatments.
Contravening the act could result in a fine of between NT$50,000 and NT$250,000.
The department said that from 2016 to April it has imposed fines totaling NT$23.53 million in 347 cases, of which 80.69 percent were online ads and 5.76 percent were TV ads, while the remaining 13.55 percent were other types of advertising, including flyers and print ads.
The majority of the department’s fines for illegal medical advertisements were levied on cosmetic surgery clinics for offering discounts, as well as several cases of exaggerated advertising, Medical Affairs Division Director Ho Shu-an (何叔安) said.
He urged people to be careful and consult a doctor if they are considering undergoing a cosmetic procedure; avoid compulsively buying a series of treatment sessions because of discounts; gain a clear understanding of the procedures and make sure they are performed by a licensed physician; not to prepay for treatment; and remember to ask for a receipt after every session.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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