Evaluation of the Taipei Hospital Integrated Care System

Evaluation of the Taipei Hospital Integrated Care System

Under government health policy, the integrated care system is an improvement on the existing outpatient Utilization. Previously, patients must register for each department and physician separately for an outpatient visit. Under the integrated care system, patients are waived of the extra registration steps and can proceed to the next appointment directly after the first. Currently, eight departments have been incorporated into the integrated care system based on previous comorbidity data. Physicians can immediately access all prescriptions, and lab results for the patient during that day. Data from 3952 previous regular patients were obtained from National Health Insurance reports and the following parameters were calculated for a period of 18 months: the number of monthly visits, the amount of drug prescriptions per month, their medical-related costs per month, and the number of monthly emergency room（ER）admittances. These patients, after being entered under the integrated care system, were then followed for the same parameters for an additional 13 months and compared with the previous data set.