Taipei, April 27 (CNA) China Medical University Hospital (CMUH) admitted on Saturday that a letter published in The Lancet this month by its doctors about Taiwan’s healthcare system being “on the brink of systemic collapse” contained factual errors.
The Taichung-based hospital said in a statement that it identified multiple mistakes in a letter authored by two of its doctors that was published in volume 405 of the renowned medical journal.
CMUH said that the doctors were “deeply apologetic” over the erroneous content and have formally requested that The Lancet publish a correction.
According to CMUH, the letter written by Li Jing-xing (李景行) and Hsu Shu-bai (許漱白) inaccurately stated that Taiwan’s COVID-19 hospitalization fatality rate was 58.2 percent.
The hospital said the figure was a misreading of a 2025 study by Chang Gung Memorial Hospital published in Infection and Drug Resistance, which found that 58.2 percent of critically ill COVID-19 patients requiring intubation were infected with the omicron variant, not that 58.2 percent of hospitalized patients had died.
CMUH also said the letter erroneously reported that Taiwan had 62 nurses per 10,000 people in 2021, when the actual number was 78 nurses per 10,000 people.
The hospital also said a supporting document meant to illustrate the healthcare system’s interconnectedness was mistakenly replaced with the wrong file.
CMUH said the errors caused unnecessary confusion among Taiwan’s medical community, and the authors had compiled a detailed list of mistakes for correction.
The hospital emphasized that the government has prioritized addressing healthcare system strain in the post-pandemic era, with the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) holding multiple meetings to coordinate response strategies.
It added that Taiwan’s National Health Insurance system has long provided “exceptionally high standards of treatment” and remains a model for other countries.
On Saturday, Taiwan’s Minister of Health and Welfare Chiu Tai-yuan (邱泰源) criticized the letter, saying that using incorrect statistics to attack Taiwan’s health system was “deeply unfair” to medical workers.
