Taipei Veterans General Hospital Researchers Publish New Study Findings on Environmental Research and Public Health (Characteristics of Clinics without National Health Insurance Contracts: A Nationwide Survey in Taiwan): Environmental Health – Environmental Research and Public Health

Health & Medicine Business Daily

2022 FEB 24 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Health & Medicine Business Daily -- Fresh data on environmental research and public health are presented in a new report. According to news reporting out of Taipei, Taiwan, by NewsRx editors, research stated, “Based on the 1978 Alma-Ata Declaration, the key to achieving health for all is primary health care, and many countries have established various comprehensive health care systems.”

Funders for this research include Taipei Veterans General Hospital Funder DOI: 10.13039/501100011912 Award: V109E-002-1.

Our news reporters obtained a quote from the research from Taipei Veterans General Hospital: “Because of the financial toll of a public health care system, government-sponsored public health insurance is not universally accepted. This study used Taiwan as the backdrop to understand why many health clinics have chosen not to accept the National Health Insurance (NHI), despite it covering 99.93% of the country’s population. The clinics’ operational details were garnered from the datasets of Taiwan’s open government data platforms and checked against the list of contracting clinics within the NHI. Of 10,907 Western medicine primary care clinics in 2016, as many as 9846 (90.3%) clinics had signed contracts with the NHI. The remaining 1061 noncontracting clinics were distributed in urban (94.5%, * * n* * = 1003), suburban (4.9%, * * n* * = 52), and rural/remote areas (0.6%, * * n* * = 6). The NHI did not have contracts with 183 plastic surgery, 88 internal medicine, and 85 surgery clinics.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “In conclusion, nearly one-tenth of clinics practiced independently of the NHI in Taiwan. Their reasons for declining the contract and practices for delivering their services deserve further studies.”

For more information on this research see: Characteristics of Clinics without National Health Insurance Contracts: A Nationwide Survey in Taiwan. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2022,19(1517):1517. (International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health - http://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph). The publisher for International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is MDPI AG.

A free version of this journal article is available at https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19031517.

Our news journalists report that more information may be obtained by contacting Pei-Jyun Lu, Department of Medical Education, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taipei 112, Taiwan. Additional authors for this research include Jui-Yao Liu, Hsin Ma, Tzeng-Ji Chen, Li-Fang Chou, Shinn-Jang Hwang.