The National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH) yesterday said it does not have a special procedure for treating legislators, while Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said he used to ask legislators to wait in line like everyone else when he worked at the hospital.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators Lin Yi-hua (林奕華) and Chen Yu-jen (陳玉珍) were taken to the hospital’s emergency room after they said they were injured on Friday when a group of KMT legislators and Taipei City Councilors tried to force their way into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs building demanding to see Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮).
Chen was placed on a bed in a separate room in the acute and critical care section, after her fingers were caught in a door during the scuffle, and she said she felt dizzy and had difficulty breathing.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
Photographs posted online by the KMT showing many party officials visiting the legislators in the emergency room on Saturday sparked a public outcry over the perceived abuse of medical resources.
An Internet user on Sunday posted a flow chart reportedly from the hospital, titled “Procedures for treating legislators or patients they entrusted,” on a physicians’ forum, instructing that if a legislator arrives at the emergency room, they should be placed in the acute and critical care section for treatment or observation.
The hospital issued a statement saying that the flow chart was drawn up more than 10 years ago, but it was not approved by hospital management and is not part of medical professionals’ work procedure.
“When there is a vacancy in the acute and critical care section, the hospital will assist public figures by placing them in separate rooms,” it said, “but we will also inform them that the emergency room is a medical operation area, so interviewing or filming is prohibited, as it involves exposing patient privacy, and that the patient should not be accompanied by more than two people.”
All the patients have been admitted after going through triage and standard procedures so that other patients’ right to healthcare would not be affected, the hospital said.
The hospital apologized to anyone who was affected by the incident.
Ko, who was the head of the hospital’s traumatology department before becoming mayor, was asked about the issue.
“It certainly was not drafted by me,” he said as he looked at the flow chart.
“When I was at the NTUH, the department I was in charge of did not have this SOP [standard operating procedure], but that was five years ago, and I do not know if they changed,” Ko said. “Usually when legislators came, we would tell them to wait in line.”
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