Significance and problems of the hospital fee for psychiatric emergencies and physical complications

Abstract

The fee for psychiatric emergencies and physical complications established in 2008 is an epoch-making hospital fee that has the capacity to greatly increase the income of the psychiatric ward of general hospitals. This hospital fee is the general hospital version of the hospital fee for psychiatric emergencies established in 2002. The origins of the fee’s complicated facility standards can be traced to the designated hospitalization system for compulsory hospitalization of the Mental Health Act in 1950, and to the notification of the Administrative Vice-Minister of Health and Welfare in 1958; this notification was a so-called psychiatric hospital exception, which introduced the hospital fee in order to independently treat patients of the general ward and the psychiatric ward in the general hospitals. Although only nine hospitals apply the fee at present, it is our desire that the medical fee be revised in the future in order to take advantage of having a psychiatric unit in general hospitals.