Reported by Liu Chia-Yun from Taipei

The NHIA passed the proposal to increase the payment standard for treating critical and severe conditions.  NT$6 billion will be allocated from the global budget for hospitals to fund this policy.  Among them, NT$545 million will be ring-fenced for A&E services, including increasing the payments for off-hour consultation and the payments for treating Grade 1-2 injuries.  The policy will be submitted to the NHI Joint Meeting for approval in August and could be put into practice as soon as from October.

This policy also allocates an extra NT$1.596 billion for in-hospital consultation of intensive care, NT$1.346 billion for surgical operations, NT$2.53 billion for anesthesia, obstetrics, pediatrics and internal medicine.

Tsai Shu-Ling, Deputy Director of the NHIA, pointed out that the decision was made after many discussion meetings held in the past three months.  Total 1706 treatment items will see an increase in payment.  12 items will even have a 150% increase, including replantation of amputated finger, high-risk pregnancy, paediatric isolation ward consultation, etc.

Many people reckoned that low NHI payment is to blame for the recent surge of resignation of doctors from the A&E ward of Chang-Gong Memorial Hospital.   Tsai Shu-Ling stressed that this new policy is irrelevant to that incident in Chang-Gong.  The NHIA had been working on this policy since the beginning of this year. The purpose of this policy is to reinforce the implementation of graded healthcare, as well as to encourage hospitals to reduce services of ailment treatments and provide off-hour A&E services. 

This policy is welcomed by Dr Yu Chong-Jen, the President of the Taiwan Society of Critical Care Medicine and the Vice Superintendent of the NTUH.  Dr Yu hoped that this long-awaited increase of payments will be implemented with retrospective effect from January 1st of this year. 

【2017-07-06 / United Daily News】