Department of Family Medicine, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taipei 112, Taiwan.
School of Medicine, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taipei 112, Taiwan.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Aug 28;18(17):9097. doi: 10.3390/ijerph18179097.
Family physicians play an essential role as gatekeepers in primary health care. However, most studies in the past focused on the geographic maldistribution of family physicians, and few studies focused on the distribution of family physicians between private practices and hospitals. This study aims to analyze the trends in practice locations of family physicians in Taiwan between 1999 and 2018, using the databases of the Taiwan Association of Family Medicine and Taiwan Medical Association. Although the annual number of physicians registered as family physicians had steadily increased from 1876 in 1999 to 3655 in 2018, the ratio of family physicians practicing in hospitals to total family physicians remained stable around 40% in the study period. Even after eliminating the trainees who were entirely registered at hospitals, the proportion of hospital-based family physicians still accounted for about one-third of the total in each year. In conclusion, family physicians had been continuously demanded by hospitals in Taiwan. If the supply of primary care-oriented family physicians is insufficient outside hospitals, health manpower planning would require urgent adjustments.
家庭医生在初级卫生保健中扮演着重要的守门人角色。然而，过去的大多数研究都集中在家庭医生的地理分布不均上，很少有研究关注家庭医生在私人诊所和医院之间的分布。本研究旨在利用台湾家庭医学学会和台湾医学会的数据库，分析 1999 年至 2018 年台湾家庭医生执业地点的变化趋势。尽管注册为家庭医生的医生人数从 1999 年的 1876 人稳步增加到 2018 年的 3655 人，但在研究期间，在医院执业的家庭医生比例与家庭医生总数的比例一直稳定在 40%左右。即使在剔除完全在医院注册的实习生后，医院的家庭医生比例仍占每年总数的约三分之一。总之，台湾的医院一直在不断地需要家庭医生。如果医院以外的以初级保健为导向的家庭医生供应不足，卫生人力规划将需要紧急调整。
