Dr. Lee Po-chang, director-general of the National Health Insurance Administration under the Ministry of Health and Welfare, said the IHF’s recognition in “Building the New Normal: Harnessing Transformative Practices from the COVID-19 Pandemic” is testament to the success of the Taiwan Model.
It also underscores the country’s commitment to advancing global health as part of efforts to meaningfully participate in the World Health Organization, Lee said. Taiwan will continue to share its NHI system experiences with the international community in an attempt to achieve the WHO’s goal of universal health coverage, he added.
According to the report, Taipei City Hospital is an exemplar of coronavirus containment, drawing on experiences in managing the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome in 2003 by enhancing its Traffic Control Building model. This involved setting up screening stations prior to hospital entry, admitting patients directly to special wards and upgrading environmental cleaning and disinfection.
Alongside government-mandated protocols for wearing face masks and other hygiene initiatives, the model helped Taiwan achieve a zero domestic infection rate for more than three months, the report added.
Taiwan’s innovative integration of the NHIA’s electronic health records system with immigration data enabling a swifter, more targeted response to COVID-19 was also lauded in the report.
Ahead of Taiwan’s first case, the NHIA developed a centralized real-time alerts system for potential cases by linking MediCloud, which provides real-time access to health records to hospitals and patients, with border entry and exit data uploaded from its National Immigration Agency.
This has been vital to Taiwan’s precision testing strategy, the report said, adding that is efficient in testing a small but critical number of people as opposed to mass-testing. (SFC-E)
