Why people select the outpatient clinic of medical centers: a nationwide analysis in Taiwan.

ABSTRACT:

Introduction

In contrast to other countries, Taiwan's National Health Insurance (NHI) program allows patients to freely select the specialists and tiers of medical care facility without a referral. Some medical centers in Taiwan receive over 10,000 outpatients per day. In the NHI program, the co-payment was increased for high-tier facilities for outpatient visits in 2002, 2005, and 2017. However, the policies only mildly reduced the use of high-tier medical care facilities. The main purpose of this study was to evaluate the factors contributing to the patients' selection of the outpatient clinic of medical centers without a referral.

Methods

An online anonymous survey was conducted by using the Google Forms platform utilizing a self-constructed questionnaire from September t

SUBMITTER: Lin MH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7456533 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature