Minister of Health and Welfare Shi Chongliang proposed system transformation to solve the medical manpower shortage, promote whole-person care and individual hospital expenditures

Facing a super-aging society, Minister of Health and Welfare Shi Chongliang launched a system transformation to break the medical manpower shortage. (Photo by reporter Tang Shiming)

Faced with the trend of "super sharp decline, super old age, and super low birthrate" in Taiwan's population, Minister of Health and Welfare Shi Chongliang pointed out today (3rd) that the main health insurance paying group of people aged 15 to 64 will continue to decrease in the future, and the medical needs of the elderly are surging. The medical system is facing four major challenges: financial pressure, manpower shortage, digital information security and drug resilience. If there is no system transformation, health insurance finance and manpower will be overwhelmed. In order to solve the shortage of medical manpower, he proposed a strategy to reconstruct the "manpower pyramid". The core principle is to automate tasks that are not necessarily performed manually, and offload matters that do not require professionals to handle, so as to release precious medical manpower to core care.

Regarding the reform of the health insurance financial and payment system, Shi Chongliang said that the government has significantly increased budgetary injections in recent years to stabilize the value of health insurance points. He stressed that the focus of future reforms is to promote "whole-person care" and "hospital individual totals", break the traditional fee-for-service model, and develop towards outpatient bundle care (Bundle Care) and inpatient case payment (DRG), completely reversing the past logic of "only the hospital gets income when patients are sick", and realize the new vision of "people get less sick, prevention is better, and hospitals and doctors also have income".

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Today is the exhibition of the achievements of Xiu Chuan Medical System's "Healthy Taiwan Deepening Plan". Huang Minghe, President of Xiu Chuan Medical System, accompanied Shi Chongliang to attend. Shi Chongliang spoke of "Resilience and Sustainability" In a keynote speech titled "Healthy Taiwan", Shi Chongliang also praised Xiuchuan Medical System, which has been operating in the country for 53 years. He bluntly stated that it is extremely difficult for a company to span half a century and continue to thrive. He hopes to combine the power of regional medical leaders to implement hierarchical medical care and cross-field cooperation so that Taiwan's medical system can achieve optimal development in a super-aging society.

Minister of Health and Welfare Shi Chongliang (center in the front row) attended the Xiuchuan Medical System Achievements Exhibition today. (Photo by reporter Tang Shiming)

Minister of Health and Welfare Shi Chongliang (right) today attended Xiu Chuan Medical System's "Healthy Taiwan Deepening Plan". (Photo by reporter Tang Shiming)