Taiwan's Healthcare Under Scrutiny: Hospital Admits Errors in Lancet Letter

Factual Inaccuracies Surface in Criticism of Taiwan's Healthcare System, Prompting Apology and Correction Request

Taipei, April 27 – China Medical University Hospital (CMUH) has acknowledged on Saturday that a letter published in The Lancet earlier this month by its doctors, which portrayed Taiwan's healthcare system as being "on the brink of systemic collapse," contained factual errors.

The Taichung-based hospital stated that it identified several mistakes in the letter, authored by two of its doctors, published in volume 405 of the prestigious medical journal.

CMUH indicated that the doctors were "deeply apologetic" concerning the incorrect content and have formally requested that The Lancet publish a correction.

According to CMUH, the letter, penned by Li Jing-xing (李景行) and Hsu Shu-bai (許漱白), incorrectly stated that Taiwan's COVID-19 hospitalization fatality rate was 58.2 percent.

The hospital clarified that this figure was a misinterpretation of a 2025 study by Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, published in Infection and Drug Resistance. The study 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 reported that the letter erroneously stated that Taiwan had 62 nurses per 10,000 people in 2021, when the actual number was 78 nurses per 10,000 people.

Additionally, the hospital revealed that a supporting document intended to illustrate the healthcare system's interconnectedness was mistakenly replaced with the incorrect file.

CMUH noted that the errors caused unnecessary confusion within Taiwan's medical community, and the authors have 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 further 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, stating that using incorrect statistics to attack Taiwan's health system was "deeply unfair" to medical workers.