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By Lee I-chia / Staff reporter
Hospitals must raise healthcare professionals’ salaries to receive NT$4.2 billion (US$140.21 million) in National Health Insurance (NHI) payments allocated for emergency departments, National Health Insurance Administration Director-General Shih Chung-liang (石崇良) said yesterday.
The agency in March announced the allocation after the Taiwan Society of Emergency Medicine (TSEM) in February urged the government to address unprecedented emergency department overcrowding.
The issue was brought up again earlier this month, when a local news magazine reported that TSEM data showed that 66 emergency department doctors had left their post this year.
Photo: Chiu Chih-jou, Taipei Times
It cited TSEM member Tian Chih-hsueh (田知學) as saying that 50 more emergency department doctors were planning to leave this year, and that hospitals were rapidly losing clinical physicians.
Responding to the report, Minister of Health and Welfare Chiu Tai-yuan (邱泰源) on Monday confirmed that the funds had been allocated and would be distributed to hospitals starting this month.
However, Shih yesterday said there was no precise timing, as hospitals must first raise salaries for healthcare professionals.
“The payment was passed and became effective on May 1, but we have a provision: The salaries of physicians and nurses must be raised for the payments to be made,” he said.
The NT$4.2 billion includes funding for healthcare services for acute and critical illnesses, intensive care units and nursing fees for acute care hospital beds, he said.
Meanwhile, an image posted to Facebook on Sunday showed a screen grab of a Line group chat in which Chiayi Chang Gung Memorial Hospital Department of Neurology director Huang Yen-chu (黃彥筑) said that the neurology departments of all major hospitals are overwhelmed.
He then listed the criteria for transferring patients who need a thrombectomy (a procedure to remove blood clots).
Asked about the matter, Shih said that while Chiayi Chang Gung Memorial Hospital is responsible for most thrombectomy cases in the Chiayi County area, it is temporarily short-staffed.
The Line message was asking hospitals in the region to take in some of its patients, he said.
“Blood clot removal is typically performed within 24 hours of stroke onset, with ‘clot-busting’ drugs typically administered within four-and-a-half hours,” he said.
Hopefully people can seek medical treatment according to the hierarchical diagnosis and treatment system, allowing more critical cases to be treated by capable hospitals, to avoid overwhelming emergency departments, he added.
The treatment fee for a thrombus is about 60,000 NHI points (one point usually equals NT$1), while the cost of medical devices, such as stents, is about 200,000 points, all of which is covered by the NHI, Shih said.
After the treatment guidelines for performing a thrombectomy were revised last year, extending the time from eight hours after onset to 24 hours, based on international studies, more people are eligible for the procedure, creating a greater medical burden, he said.
Last year, the NHI started giving an additional bonus of up to 35,000 points for a thrombectomy performed within 24 hours, he said.
The total NHI payment for performing such a thrombectomy is about 95,000 NHI points, he said.
At a meeting last month, the administration increased the assessment fee for thrombus by 3,000 points, as not all stroke cases are suitable for undergoing the procedure, he said, adding that the change would take effect on July 1.
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