The National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA) launched the National Health Insurance Integrated Home Care Project in February 2016, encouraging contract hospitals to form a home care team composing of health professionals. The team will be providing health care services in the homes of patients with reduced mobility, thus strengthening the network of healthcare resources and develop local home care services. As of August 5, 2016, 77 teams and 501 healthcare service institutions have participated in the project, providing care for a total of 2,679 people, and this number is continuing to increase.
Since the implementation of the National Health Insurance program in 1995, the NHIA has been continuously introducing new home care services, including those for patients with reduced mobility, home-based treatment for patients with chronic mental illness, home care for ventilator-dependent patients, and hospice care for terminal patients. In 2015, over 100,000 patients have accepted the aforementioned home care services. Patients’ care needs can change as their disease conditions progress. For example, patients with terminal illness must be transferred to other care institutions that offer hospice care because general home care institutions can no longer satisfy their requirements.
To improve the fragmented model of different types of home care services, the NHIA will be integrating various home care services (general, respiratory, and hospice care) with the home healthcare pilot project implemented in 2015 into the National Health Insurance Integrated Home Care Project. The highlights of this Project include a broader scope of applicability, strengthened case management protocols, and a heightened focus on boosting cooperation among care teams in community. Such cooperation comprises horizontal integration between health professionals from different backgrounds and vertical integration of upstream and downstream hospitals to provide patient-centered continuous healthcare services.
Such service embodies the third medical policy advocated by President Tsai Ing-Wen: “For elderly adults with reduced mobility and disabilities, the community care team shall provide integrated evaluation at close range and overall planning of care resources. The team shall cooperate with the NHIA in launching a home care project that allows health care professionals to visit the homes of elderly people with reduced mobility to provide more comprehensive services, and extend such services to hospice care.” The NHIA will continue encouraging hospitals to form integrated home care teams, evenly distribute them across various regions, and build an information sharing platform for case management so that all care teams can communicate with each other about patients’ care conditions, thereby enhancing care quality and efficiency.