Preventive health services for adults
The government provided preventive healthcare service for adults, including physical examinations, blood and urine tests, and health consultations. These are provided free of charge to people aged 40-64 every three years, and to those aged 65 or over every year.
Integrated Screening Services
In order to provide comprehensive, on-site screening in local communities, the HPA has been encouraging county and city governments to consolidate their medical resources since 2002. This includes integrating screening already used in adult preventive health care services and cancer detection.
Prevention and Control of Major Chronic Diseases
Due to the increasing prevalence of chronic disease in Taiwan, the HPA has set metabolic syndromes, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and kidney diseases, amongst others, as the preventive foci of chronic disease. Chronic disease can negatively affect health in the long term, and also worsens gradually. HPA has therefore stipulated preventive goals for major chronic diseases, including:
1. Improvement and maintenance of the health of middle-aged and elderly people.
2. Prevention and delay in the occurrence of chronic disease.
3. Enhancing quality of life for patients, family members, and caregivers.
Diabetes Care and Chronic Kidney Disease
The HPA promoted diabetes shared-care networks in 22 counties and cities, and also established an accreditation system for diabetes medical care staff. HPA also publicly revised the “Standards for Accreditation of Diabetes Shared-Care Networks Medical Staff”, added new classifications for pharmaceutical experts, simplified the process and burden of specialist nursing and nutrition accreditation, and extended the period of validity of these medical accreditations. For chronic kidney disease (CKD), HPA established a case management and information system for chronic kidney disease in order to help medical institutions register and retrieve data related to diagnosis and treatment of kidney disease and referrals. Health officials also established a cross-departmental, interdisciplinary model of specialized care in order to delay and lessen the development of CKD and assist patients preparing for dialysis.
Chronic Respiratory Diseases
In order to effectively prevent Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), in addition to enhancing and improving people's essential literacy on smoking cessation and staying away from secondhand smoking, establishing a guidelines for local clinics so that all caregivers can provide consistent and high-quality nursing caring is also important.
Cardiovascular Diseases
In order to promote 3 “Highs” (high blood pressure, high blood lipids and high blood glucose) and coronary disease prevention, HPA helped hospitals to establish cross-department work teams and healthcare administrators. Through good 3H control, tobacco cessation services, regular exercise, and compliance with medical interventions and follow-up measures, HPA has established quality indicators and promoted coronary disease prevention and management.
Healthy Hospital Certification – “Health Promoting Hospital”
HPA adopted the International Health Promoting Hospital and Health Services network’s HPH standards into the “Healthy Hospital Certification”, drawing on indicators for health promotion within healthcare institutions, and combining different specialty modules such as smoke free hospital, environment-friendly hospital and age-baby friendly hospitals. The indicators were simplified and optimized to reduce work burden, and to allow ease of data collection as policy support, emphasizing on patient-focused method to implement health promotion services.
Age-friendly Healthcare: the promotion of “Recognition of Age-friendly Hospitals and Health Services”
In response to the rapid ageing of Taiwan’s population, and to assist healthcare institutions to prepare in a timely fashion, HPA has developed “Taiwan’s Framework of Age-friendly Hospitals and Health Services”, based on the three main age-friendly principles from WHO's “Toward Age84 friendly Primary Health Care” published in 2004, and the five standards of Health Promoting Hospitals (HPH). The framework encompasses four standards: Management Policy, Communication and Services, Care Processes, and Physical Environment, 11 substandards, and 60 items. The framework was released in 2010, and launched in hospitals in 2011. It is later expanded to clinics (community health groups) and long-term healthcare organizations in 2012. Core standards in this framework is later integrated into the Healthy Hospital certification.
Health Literacy and improving the accessibility of health information
Promotion of Shared Decision Making Model of Non-communicable Chronic Diseases Prevention: Regarding health promotion chronic disease prevention, patient decision aids were designed and promoted to medical institutions at various levels to aid communication between doctors and patients and provide patients with knowledge of advantages and risks of all types of screening and curing methods. The health literacy level of the public and patients can improve, and further facilitate their behavior so that they proactively participate in medical decisions and enhance the quality of personal healthcare.
Through the health promoting hospital plan and age-friendly healthcare service institute plan, we have established friendly, supportive, respected, and accessible healing environments, and simplified health navigation information for institutes. Through our policies, we have also provided medical services professionals, via public health field experts and scholars, with the adjustment and rebuilding techniques needed to make important content, key messages, and process related to health promotion simplified for consumption by the end user.