With a rapidly aging population and a cash-strapped National Health Insurance system, the government is paying more attention to the issue of “futile medical care,” treatment applied only to prolong life without a foreseeable cure or positive outcome, and the prospect of hospice care.
In a seminar held by medical groups yesterday, National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH) Jinshan Branch Superintendent Huang Sheng-Jean (黃勝堅) made a presentation on how the community hospital he directs in Jinshan established the first hospice community in Taiwan.
Huang was assigned to the post by NTUH less than two years ago, when the hospital planned to initiate a pilot program promoting local, close-to-home healthcare and hospice community care in the district.
“Physicians at Jinshan branch don’t just stay in the hospital. They visit patients and their families at home and participate in community health-promotion activities to relate to local people,” Huang said.
The hospital is now employing the capitation payment system, which can be seen as a family practice system, Huang said, with a physician taking care of a number of patients closely instead of being visited by patients randomly.
The system works under the idea that pain prevention is more important than treatment, Huang added, stressing that this kind of preventive healthcare includes reducing the patient’s and their family’s suffering at the end of their life.
“Of the NT$570 billion [US$18.9 billion] healthcare expenditure paid by the NHI, about NT$170 billion is spent on futile medical treatment,” Huang said. “By operating preventive healthcare, including building quality end-of-life care and promoting the signing of DNR [do not resuscitate] to have ‘a good death,’ a lot can be saved, benefiting the sustainability of the NHI system.”
“The rate of the patients under end-of-life care that had signed the DNR was 9.2 per 1,000 last year, compared with a national rate of 6.3 per 1,000,” Huang said, adding that the number is expected to exceed 10 per 1,000 this year.
TENSIONS: The Chinese aircraft and vessels were headed toward the western Pacific to take part in a joint air and sea military exercise, the Ministry of National Defense said A relatively large number of Chinese military aircraft and vessels were detected in Taiwan’s vicinity yesterday morning, apparently en route to a Chinese military exercise in the western Pacific, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. In a statement, the ministry said 36 Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft, including J-16 fighters and nuclear-capable H-6 bombers, crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait or an extension of it, and were detected in the southern and southeastern parts of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) from 5:20am to 9:30am yesterday. They were headed toward the western Pacific to take part in a
Honor guards are to stop performing changing of the guard ceremonies around a statue of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) to avoid “worshiping authoritarianism,” the Ministry of Culture said yesterday. The fate of the bronze statue has long been the subject of fierce and polarizing debate in Taiwan, which has transformed from an autocracy under Chiang into one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies. The changing of the guard each hour at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei is a major tourist attraction, but starting from 9am on Monday, the ceremony is to be moved outdoors to Democracy Boulevard, outside the eponymous blue-and-white memorial
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) supports peaceful unification with China, and President William Lai (賴清德) is “a bit naive” for being a “practical worker for Taiwanese independence,” former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said in an interview published yesterday. Asked about whether the KMT is on the same page as the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on the issue of Taiwanese independence or unification with China, Ma told the Malaysian Chinese-language newspaper Sin Chew Daily that they are not. While the KMT supports peaceful unification and is against unification by force, the DPP opposes unification as such and
CASES SLOWING: Although weekly COVID-19 cases are rising, the growth rate has been falling, from 90 percent to 30 percent, 14 percent and 6 percent, the CDC said COVID-19 hospitalizations last week rose 6 percent to 987, while deaths soared 55 percent to 99, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, adding that the recent wave of infections would likely peak this week. People aged 65 or older accounted for 79 percent of the hospitalizations and 90 percent of the deaths, the majority of whom have or had underlying health conditions, CDC data showed. The youngest hospitalized case last week was a six-month-old, who was born preterm and was unvaccinated, CDC physician Lin Yung-ching (林詠青) said. The infant had a fever, coughing and a runny nose early this month, but