By Lee Po-chang, National Health Insurance Administration Director General

In 1999, the National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA) launched the Integrated Delivery System (IDS) to ensure that residents of mountainous areas and outlying islands who also contribute premiums to the systems have unhindered access medical resources afforded by the National Health Insurance (NHI) system.

Based on analysis of NHI data, during 2020, patients residing in Taiwan’s mountainous areas and outlying islands scheduled a total of 24,073 home care visits, translating to around 12.5 visits per patient, which further shows the importance of access to home care for the patients residing in rural areas. Currently, the NHI awards 1,709 medical points for doctor visits to mountainous areas and outlying islands, slightly higher than the 1,553 medical points paid for doctor visits to non-mountainous areas and outlying islands. However, in practice, the commute to mountainous areas and outlying islands often takes more than an hour, which cannot be compensated by the difference of 150 medical points.

To address the lack of access to specialized care for people in mountainous districts, outlying islands, and remote areas, the NHIA has enable telemedicine with specialists from major hospitals to efficiently provide medical consultation. The efforts are part of the government’s goal to achieve the provision of local access to medical care so that patients do not have to make long journeys to seek health care. Bolstering the provision of home care to rural areas under the IDS program will be among the main objective of ongoing NHI reforms. In addition, the IDS program will also be combined with efforts at promoting telemedicine as a main pillar of heal care for rural areas.

Starting this year, the NHIA will be more proactive in promoting telemedicine, bringing together doctors in the mountainous region and outlying islands with medical specialists from major hospitals to meet the basic medical needs of the local population and to achieve the goal of health care equity. We aim to work hard in narrowing the gap between urban and rural divide and realize the NHI’s responsibility to provide health care to the entire population.

[2021-11-18/United Daily News]