Page 7 - 2020-2021全民健康保險年報

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Taiwan’s National Health Insurance (NHI) , which has been emulated by countries worldwide, and we are delighted to share that Taiwan ranked number one out of 89 countries in the 2019 CEOWORLD’s Health Care Index, which evaluates national health systems based on 5 indexes, including health care infrastructure, health care professionals’ competencies, cost, quality medicine availability, and government readiness.
Thanks to the NHI, patients in Taiwan do not need to bear a heavy economic burden when seeking medical care. However, this can create problems if individuals neglect their personal health and unduly rely on the NHI. Therefore, the National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA) has been proactively promoting the concept of a sustainable NHI through various channels, most notably by raising children’s awareness of this idea. Since I took the office, I’ve advocated for the inclusion of this idea in primary school teaching materials, so that children can learn to cherish healthcare resources early on. We are honored that this concept, a sustainable NHI, has been edited into the 10th Chinese textbook of the secondsemester of the 2019 academic year. In the future, through their Chinese textbooks, tens of thousands of pupils will learn about healthcare systems and ways to avoid resource overuse, as well as the meaning and value of “helping each other” and “taking care of the vulnerable”, which will inevitably have a long-lasting influence.
To cultivate a high-quality medical environment and create a win-win situation for patients and healthcare providers, the NHIA has been constantly promoting referral system by differentiating levels of care. Most people, both
the general public and medical professionals, agree that reinforcing the referral system and differentiating levels of care is the right approach to take—we should only visit hospitals for serious illnesses, and visit clinics for minor conditions. Although we have encountered obstacles in its implementation, the idea of “differentiating levels of care” has been successfully implanted in people’s minds. In order to carry out the referral system and strengthen the capacity of primary medical institutions, the NHIA has established the “MediCloud System”, which allows the public to access all medical examination records, reports, and results at any hospital and clinics in the country.
The NHIA has accumulated medical claims nationwide over the years and has formed the NHI big data. If it can be used effectively, with the development of various medical assisting and precision medicine applications, the current medical model will be reversed, and a new era of smart care will begin. To cope with the national policy to promote innovative applications of the big data, the NHIA will gradually make available its database to the industry to develop value- added applications with the priority of ensuring the privacy of patients by abiding related laws and regulation. The NHIA will play a key role in driving smart medical applications and future medical care reform, promoting the development of medical-related industries, the advancement in innovative AI-assisted precision medicines and health tools by maximizing the value of NHI data, which would eventually benefit all people in the future.
Director General
National Health Insurance Administration Ministry of Health and Welfare
Po-Chang Lee
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