A proposed NT$2.4 billion (US$75.08 million) dental care fund for remote healthcare would only benefit students trained overseas and affect the rights of local students and practitioners, New Power Party (NPP) Legislator Claire Wang (王婉諭) said yesterday.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare earlier announced the second phase of a program to improve medical services in underserved areas in line with President William Lai’s (賴清德) “healthy Taiwan” policy, with NT$2.4 billion allocated to subsidize dental services.
Wang and Taiwan Dentist, an alliance of local dental groups, at the Legislative Yuan, said the program would undermine dental education and the industry in favor of students with foreign degrees.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
It is necessary to enhance healthcare services in remote areas, but resource allocation would be adversely affected if the program is not properly implemented, she said.
The NT$2.4 billion would be accessible to those with foreign degrees, even though they did not undergo an internship and obtain a license, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University Department of Dentistry professor Lin Yuan-min (林元敏) said.
The program’s key performance indicators evaluate the number of trainees instead of the number of patients served, without rules on length of service, service content and defaulting punishment, raising suspicions that it was designed to expedite local dental licensure for students holding foreign degrees under the guise of a remote healthcare program, he said.
The teaching workforce in hospitals has been stretched due to additional training for 50 students with foreign dental degrees, and the teaching quality could worsen if there were more of them to train, which would adversely affect dental patients, he said, adding that one in every five new dentists would be those with a foreign degree if the number of trainees doubles.
Kaohsiung Dental Association director Tsai Cheng-feng (蔡政峰) said the ministry did not discuss with medical practitioners in remote areas before it established the program, and that dentist-patient ratios should not be the sole concern, as areas face different issues.
For example, medical service sites are the most effective solutions for outlying islands and mountainous townships, and long-term financial incentives should be provided to retain dentist staff in underserved areas, he said, adding that a short-term workforce such as interns would damage the local dental service system.
An amendment to the Physicians Act (醫師法) in 2022 did not curb the number of dentists holding foreign degrees, as it exempted those with five-year work experience overseas from the foreign degree accreditation exam, Taiwan General Dental Practitioners Association director Huang Ying-Chi (黃映綺) said.
The ministry would accelerate local licensure for dental students with foreign degrees if it increases their intern number via the program, she said.
A petition protesting the “fake remote healthcare program” on the Public Policy Online Participation Network Platform accumulated more than 5,000 signatures within two weeks, but the ministry still refuses to communicate with frontline practitioners, Huang said.
She said her association demands that the program exclude dental students without a license and allow only practitioners with a license to apply for the subsidy.
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