Global Budget Allocation Mechanisms and the Impacts Assessment

Taiwan health care systems now have increasingly been seeking to move further along the spectrum of health care resource allocation mechanisms, therefore there is an urgent need for exploring enhanced resource allocation mechanism. This “Global Budget Allocation Mechanisms and the Impacts Assessment” research lasts for 2 years. In the first year, the research team will 1) systematically review the past years National Health Insurance global budget allocation and its variation in Taiwan, 2) collect the global budget allocation mechanisms (GBAMs) and structures worldwide through literature review, and 3) assess the concurrent GBAM and principle in aspects such as health care resource allocation, efficiency and effectiveness of health care system, and quality in health care. Both quantitative and qualitative methods will be adopted in this research. National Health Insurance Database and questionnaire results will be selected for quantitative analysis, focus groups and personal face-to-face in-depth interview will be used for qualitative analysis to extract the opinions of experts, professionals and medical associations. In the second year, this research will 1) explore more appropriate and applicable GBAM options after well considering both the key research results of first year and the impacts of new health care policies including Diagnosis Related Groups, Second Generation Health Insurance Bill, and long-term care insurance system, 2) propose three most applicable GBAMs, compare their pro and con respectively on health care resource allocation, efficiency and effectiveness of health care system, quality in health care, and also assess their policy applicability, and collecting opinions toward three GBAMs through questionnaire, 3) conduct qualitative Delphi approach and hold two national conferences to draw attention on GBAMs issue, to share and collect various stakeholders’ opinions, and to lead endeavor for stakeholders’ consensus, 4) recommend the most appropriate and applicable global budget allocation mechanism, and propose the transiting model for translating current allocation mechanism into the advocated one.