The National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA) on Friday said it has initiated a National Health Insurance (NHI) breast cancer care improvement program, with funding of NT$40 million (US$1.27 million) to enhance care quality and reduce the breast cancer mortality rate.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer among Taiwanese women, the NHIA said, adding that in the past decade, it had one of the highest growth rates in terms of incidence rate among all cancers.
About 17,000 people were diagnosed with breast cancer in 2023, the NHIA said, citing a 2023 cancer registry report.
Photo: Taipei Times
If detected and treated early, the five-year survival rate of breast cancer could exceed 90 percent, but that drops to about 40 percent for late-stage breast cancer, so early intervention and comprehensive care are important, it said.
NHIA Chief Secretary Liu Lin-i (劉林義) said that to improve overall treatment quality, the NHIA established a breast cancer expert panel in November last year, which developed the program last month after several rounds of deliberation.
The first feature of the program is “all-stage [patient] enrollment,” which covers all who have breast cancer, whether they are newly diagnosed or are recurrence cases, Liu said, adding that male breast cancer is also included.
Second, a “multi-disciplinary team” model would be promoted, and the team — comprising of breast surgeons, radiologists and case managers — would provide a single-window consultation and nursing guidance service to reduce the burden of travel for people who have cancer.
The NHIA said it would also offer incentives to healthcare facilities to encourage them to provide “integrated care for new diagnosed cases” based on each person’s cancer stages and conditions, as well as annual follow-up care incentives of up to five years to ensure continuity of care.
The program would establish a national breast cancer database which would collect clinical records from partner hospitals to analyze local treatment variations and gaps, serving as a foundation for refining future clinical guidelines and policy adjustments.
The NHIA said it plans to introduce a “value-based healthcare payment” model and, following the maturation of the database, hospitals would receive tiered rewards based on their team integration and performance, thereby further encouraging hospitals to continuously improve their quality of care.
NHIA Director-General Chen Lian-yu (陳亮妤) said the program also aims to bridge treatment gaps and improve overall survival rates and quality of life for people with breast cancer.
Taiwan Breast Cancer Society president Chen Fang-ming (陳芳銘) said that while the mortality rate for cancer has been decreasing in many European countries and in the US, the rate in Taiwan is not declining significantly.
The NHIA is promoting the program in hopes that the overall quality of breast cancer care in Taiwan would improve and meet WHO standards, he said.
Taiwan has a relatively low breast cancer screening rate of about 40 percent to 50 percent, Chen Fang-ming said, adding that it was driven partly by fear.
Early screening and detection contribute to about 25 percent of mortality rate reduction, while 75 percent relies on effective and comprehensive treatment, he said.
Only through a dual approach of early screening and proper treatment could Taiwan substantially decrease breast cancer mortality, he added..
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