Care upgrades for terminally ill people who want to die at home were announced by the Taipei City Hospital system yesterday.
“Because hospitals are an unfamiliar environment, most terminally ill patients would prefer to die at home,” Taipei City Hospital Superintendent Huang Sheng-jean (黃勝堅) said.
However, under the limited home care provided in the past, nurses making weekly or biweekly visits were limited to “replacing tubes” rather than “whole person care,” he said.
Under the new policy — which took effect on Jan. 9 — terminally ill patients who choose to discontinue life-sustaining treatment will be able to choose to receive care at home during their final two weeks of life, with daily visits by teams of doctors, nurses, pharmacists and psychologists.
Nineteen patients have already chosen this option, and the hospital hopes to provide such care to 100 people by the end of March, Huang said.
He said that he hoped the new policy would spur the National Health Administration to revise its rules for home care compensation, because the low compensation means many doctors are unwilling to provide such services.
Meanwhile, Taipei’s Department of Health and the Taipei City Hospital system yesterday announced that an agreement would be signed with National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH) to provide for exchanges of medical personnel and patients to improve service quality in the municipal hospital system while alleviating the shortage of beds at the university hospital.
Less ill patients can choose to stay at the municipal hospital’s Zhongxing branch while they wait for a NTUH bed, but they will be cared for by NTUH doctors.
The new measure is meant to help realize a promise by Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) — himself a physician — to rebuild Taipei’s healthcare system by transforming branches of the city hospital system into “community” hospitals, said Liu Yueh-ping (劉越萍), head of the system’s medical management division.
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