Minister of Health and Welfare Chiu Tai-yuan (邱泰源) yesterday said the ministry was still focused on reducing the unnecessary use of nasogastric intubation, but it takes time to educate and train caregivers.
Chiu made the remark while speaking to reporters at the Legislative Yuan before attending a meeting of the Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee.
About 210,000 people were using a nasogastric tube in 2023, 65 percent of whom were aged 65 or older, while about half of the residents in nursing homes were using feeding tubes, National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA) data showed.
Photo: Lo Pei-de, Taipei Times
Since June 2022, the NHIA has been offering bonuses to caregivers that get people who have used a nasogastric tube for more than three months off the device to help them eat on their own.
When asked in January about the effectiveness of the bonuses, Chiu said the removal of nasogastric tubes would be listed as a key point of the Long-term Care Plan 3.0.
However, a newspaper yesterday reported that the number of people using a nasogastric tube has been increasing annually, with nearly 400,000 people having used the device last year.
The report quoted a specialist as saying that the health ministry had not launched any training programs for residential care facility staff or other supplementary measures to encourage the removal of nasogastric tubes.
In the past three years since the NHIA began offering bonuses, the number of people that met the criteria had risen, from 98 people in the second half of 2022 to 232 in 2023, 249 last year and 70 in the first three months of this year, the report said.
Regarding the report, Chiu said that caregivers need to learn that many people do not need nasogastric intubation.
For example, many caregivers believe that people who often choke while drinking water need nasogastric intubation, but in some cases, they might struggle to drink on their own because they have oral candidiasis (a fungal infection of the mouth), and after a few days of proper treatment can drink on their own, he said.
It takes professional training and attentiveness to help people avoid the discomfort of nasogastric intubation, he said, adding that the ministry’s goal is to ensure people are not forced to use it unless necessary.
The ministry has been continuously working on the issue, but the professional training takes time, as does alleviating family members’ and caregivers’ concerns, he said.
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