Urgent care centers underutilized in Taiwan

台灣急診中心使用率不足

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Urgent care centers, launched to ease weekend overcrowding in hospital emergency rooms, have seen limited use after nearly two months of operation, prompting a doctors' union to call for performance reviews and clearer evaluation benchmarks.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare introduced the weekend UCC program to divert patients with minor ailments away from emergency rooms. The initiative followed severe emergency room congestion early last year that drew widespread complaints from the public and medical staff. The model was partly inspired by a similar system in Japan, per CNA.

UCCs are designed to treat patients with mild conditions classified as triage level four or five. They operate from 8 a.m. to midnight on weekends and are staffed by physicians from primary care clinics on a rotating basis.

However, the union said in a statement Monday that the centers’ performance has been lackluster. According to the union, UCCs across Taiwan have been treating an average of just 350 patients per day since November, fewer than the daily patient volume of a single hospital emergency room.

The union noted that based on current salary standards, daily personnel costs for a UCC can reach NT$120,000 (US$3,800), amounting to about NT$1.56 million per day across the 13 centers nationwide. By comparison, if the same 350 patients were treated in hospital emergency rooms, National Health Insurance spending would total about NT$300,000 to NT$500,000.

As a result, government spending on UCCs is estimated to be three to five times higher than emergency room reimbursements for similar cases, the union said. Despite the significant investment, some UCCs are nearly empty and have not meaningfully reduced the burden on hospital emergency departments.

The union also warned that public interest in the new centers may already be fading as media coverage declines, potentially leading to even lower patient numbers. This imbalance in resource use has been discouraging for medical staff who continue to face heavy workloads in hospital emergency rooms, it added.

According to the union’s analysis, several factors have contributed to the poor utilization. The out-of-pocket cost difference between hospital emergency rooms and UCCs is relatively small, and many people are accustomed to paying more for medical services on weekends. In addition, numerous primary care clinics in Taipei and New Taipei remain open on weekends and public holidays, offering more convenient locations than UCCs.

While acknowledging the government’s good intentions, the union urged authorities to set clear performance targets for existing centers. If those targets cannot be met despite adjustments, the union said, the centers should be phased out to limit losses or relocated to more suitable areas.

If UCCs are intended to be part of the government’s “resilient healthcare” framework for disaster response and mass-casualty events, the union said the centers could be developed into community first-aid stations. The union concluded by calling on the government to reassess the UCC concept to ensure healthcare resources are used more effectively.