The Ministry of Health and Welfare yesterday announced three new policies taking effect this month: expanding National Health Insurance (NHI) medication coverage, increasing free vaccinations and adjusting hospital bed policies during flu season.
Starting this month, the NHI is expanding its drug coverage to include empagliflozin and dapagliflozin for people with chronic kidney disease and congestive heart failure, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said.
People with chronic kidney disease receiving these drugs are required to enroll in either the Early-Stage Chronic Kidney Disease Integrated Care Program or the NHI Pre-End-Stage Renal Disease Patient Care and Education Program, it said.
Photo: CNA
The new policy is estimated to benefit close to 170,000 people and cover about NT$1.6 billion (US$48.75 million) in medication fees, it added.
Starting on March 10, publicly funded pneumococcal vaccinations would be expanded to people aged 19 to 64 at high risk of invasive pneumococcal disease, the CDC said.
High-risk groups include “those with splenic dysfunction, immunodeficiency, cochlear implants or cerebrospinal fluid leakage, as well as people with malignant tumors or organ transplants recipients who have received immunosuppressive agents or radiation therapy within the past year,” it said.
Although the flu epidemic has improved over the past two weeks, it is still flu season and the number of people reporting flu-like symptoms remains high, it said.
To provide more space in hospitals for patients, the NHI Administration would allow medical institutions to use special hospital beds as general beds, it said.
This policy would ensure that medical resources are allocated more efficiently, it said.
Meanwhile, amid rising complaints about overcrowding at emergency rooms across the nation since the Lunar New Year holiday, Minister of Health and Welfare Chiu Tai-yuan (邱泰源) on Monday proposed five measures to address the problem, including instructing medical centers to improve inpatient bed allocation and strengthening coordination among regional hospitals.
At a news conference on Thursday after the weekly Cabinet meeting, Cabinet spokesperson Michelle Lee (李慧芝) relayed that Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) had instructed the ministry to strictly implement the improvement measures.
Cho expressed hope that hospitals that have already implemented the improvement would continue to do so and that the measures would be expanded to other hospitals to enhance patient triage systems, Lee said.
Additional reporting by CNA
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