Although Taiwan offers high quality low-cost medical services, this is not the key factor in tapping the Chinese market for medical tourism, as clearing the red tape for severely ill patents is more vital, a medical executive said Saturday. Wu Ming-yen, secretary general of the Taiwan Non-governmental Hospitals and Clinics Association (NHCA), said that the complicated, time consuming application process is deterring very ill Chinese citizens who wish to travel to Taiwan to seek medical attention. Currently, Chinese citizens who wish to visit Taiwan for medical purposes must first obtain a medical certificate from a doctor in China, verifying that they need specialized care. Then they must secure an acceptance from a Taiwan hospital, which in turn is required to apply to Taiwan immigration authorities, on behalf of the prospective patient, for an entry permit. In the final step, the patients have to obtain permission from the Chinese authorities to travel to Taiwan. Wu said that the second and third steps could take up to three weeks and if the applicant is lucky, the last step could take a month. In response to media inquiries about the situation, Liu Ming-hsun, the official in charge of the issue at the Department of Health's Bureau of Medical Affairs, said Taiwan is working to relax the restrictions and streamline the application procedure. However, Liu added, it might still take a long time for severely ill patients to obtain the Chinese authorities' permission to travel to Taiwan. He therefore urged Taiwan's Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and the Beijing- based Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) to address this issue in a timely manner. The SEF and ARATS are two quasi-official intermediary bodies designated by each side to handle cross-strait issues in the absence of official ties. In 2007, Taiwan opened its doors to patients from China seeking live donor liver transplants, maxillofacial reconstruction, artificial insemination, joint replacement, and cardiovascular treatment. However, statistics show that so far, only about 30 Chinese patients have traveled to Taiwan for this type of medical treatment. This number falls far short of the government's goal of 'offering medical services to 100,000 people in three years' at the time when the restrictions were lifted, said Lee Wei-chiang, director of Taipei Veterans General Hospital's International Medical Service Center (IMSC). The information on the IMSC's Web site and the way it is presented indicates that it is targeting China as one of its major sources of patients. The Web site features both English and Mandarin, but the information in Mandarin is written in simplified Chinese characters, the system used in China. 