NHIA Director General Lee Po-chang

Recent advancements in medical technology have brought new hope for patients, in form of new drugs and genetic testing techniques. However, while the National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA) draws up a budget to cover reimbursement of new drugs each year, such as the NT$3.182 billion in funding allotted in 2022, the long-term safety and efficacy and financial impacts of the new additions remain uncertain. An analysis of past data show that it takes on average 12 months for a new drug to be included on the National Health Insurance (NHI) fee schedule. The long wait is particularly evident among drugs estimated to have a significant impact on NHI finances, which require lengthy price negotiation with drug manufacturers. Separately, under the recommendation of Minister Health and Welfare Hsueh Jui-yuan, a new drug registration system will be set up a drug registration system to enable analysis of real-world data, which shall serve as an additional criterion for continued NHI reimbursement.

Providing care to patients with cancer and rare diseases is also another long-running priority of the NHIA, in particular those of disadvantaged groups. However, as the NHI resources are finite, the NHIA often must balance between different stakeholders. To do so, the NHIA has implemented the e-health cloud system to help detect and prevent wastage of resources, such as redundant drug prescriptions and have seen some early success.

If each patient cut the number of unnecessary visits to the doctor by one, as much as 37.8 billion medical points can be saved each year. As for the new drugs and therapeutics that are proven and cost-effective that needed by patients, the NHIA will work to allocate adequate funding. The NHIA also hopes that manufacturers will be open to negotiations on price, in the bid to ensure the interest of patients and the sustainability of the NHI.

[2022-12-25/Liberty Times]