Page 80 - 2022 Taiwan Health and Welfare Report

care and increasing the capacity for discharge planning. The program involves aggressive promotion of professional reablement services by emphasizing the golden window of recovery and reablement (within 3 months after discharge) and assisting the clients in specific trainings designed to help them become independent. This would in turn help them become more active in their social participation and independent and consequently, reduce their family members' stress and financial burden from care giving. As of December, 2021, a total of 290 hospitals took part in the plan.
6. Minimizing Outpatient Visits by Institutional Residents Plan
Even with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, many residents of long-term care institutions suffer from chronic diseases, and need to make regular visits to medical institutions for outpatient care and medications. Medical institutions tend to be crowded with people leading to nosocomial infections. Frequent outpatient visits of institutional residents will certainly expose them and accompanying people to significant risk of infection. As such, the MOHW implemented the Minimizing Outpatient Visits by Institutional Residents Plan on July 27, 2020. The proposal was amended on March 1, 2022. By limiting long- term care institutions to engage only a single medical institution, it was easier to monitor the health of residents, while keeping their chronic conditions under control to protect their health.
Considering reductions in average outpatient visits, chronic disease management, and nutritional care accomplished, medical institutions and long-term care institutions that signed single responsible management contracts under this program could receive bonuses of up to NTD 120,000 and NTD 60,000 respectively every six months. In 2020, 343 long-term care institutions and 239 medical institutions were granted the said bonuses. If the first half of 2021, granted the said bonuses to 410 long-term care institutions and 217 medical institutions.
Chapter 3 Long-Term Care Human Resources
▏Section 1 Care Worker Workforce
Against an estimated need for 62,000 caregivers in 2021, some 89,413 people committed themselves to rendering long-term care services as of the end of the year. It meant an increase of 12,543, or 1.16 times from 76,870 a year earlier.
To strengthen the manpower of caregiver services and reinforce retention, the MOHW actively improved the conditions of labor, and upgrade motivations for employment. The related measures were as follow:
1. Improve salary income: Promoted a payment audit system. The payment was subsidized according to caregiving plan (service items) instead of by hours. At the same time, additional fees were paid for caring for more difficult cases, other than providing people with diverse services, also removed the negative stereotype of "hourly workers," upgraded the professional images of caregiving services and provide enough funding for service units to increase salaries for caregivers. For household caregivers, the monthly salary was at least NTD 32,000 dollars or NTD 200 per hour.
2. Strengthen caregiver development: Caregivers with certain years of experience according to related regulations could be service supervisors or heads of long-term care institutions, to promote a rise to managerial level or encourage enterprise start-up.
3. Expand manpower nurturing: the MOHW to encourage schools and long-term care institutions to nurture caregiving manpower, worked with Ministry of Education to host the "Vocational School Caregiving Cultivation Plan" seminar. The long-term care institutions were encouraged to provide scholarships and schools to nurture students' caregiving service techniques, which was beneficial for institutions' manpower recruitment and reduced the disparity between school and practical knowledge.
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