Does anyone know where in the Seattle/US area I can obtain the health exam with Notarization required for the Taiwan Residency visa application? According to info i’ve seen so far, it appears it needs to be a hospital.
I’ve tried my own health service provider and a contact at the local Taiwan cultural branch office without success.
Warning: I’m no expert; I just have some impressions dubiously gained by doing a little surfing and reading in the past 40 or 50 minutes or thereabouts.
What did the person(s) at TECO say about the health certificate/health exam?
I hope the stuff below helps, or at least does no harm; if it doesn’t look helpful, please disregard it:
Is the health form that needs to be filled in available only through a TECO office? Is it available elsewhere or online?
I know I will also need my fbi report.
I’m very sorry I missed the above question! I hope this isn’t too late to help you. I also hope that the information quoted below is adequate and accurate, because I don’t have firsthand knowledge of these issues. Anyway, the below stuff is what I stumbled upon. In the quote below, I tried to stick to what I thought pertained to your situation, and again, I hope this helps or at least does no harm:
(Boldface added by me.)
As far as I can tell, the National Immigration Agency link that was included in the above answer was dead, so I Googled “健康證明應檢查項目(乙表),” and got this PDF document:
https://www.immigration.gov.tw/media/44665/健康證明應檢查項目-乙表.pdf
Re-pasting the link to the above-quoted asking and answering posts:
Moving family to Taiwan and Applying for Household Registration - #98 by cherrim
If there’s anything inaccurate or inadequate in my attempt to give information, I hope that a more knowledgeable person will correct it or supplement it.
I went through this process recently with Seattle TECO. I asked them for a list of accepted hospitals/clinics and they told me any would be fine. Just to be safe I focused on large, well-known hospitals and clinics. I called around and none had an in-house notary available to notarize the examining physician’s signature, even in their corporate office. Washington State law now provides that notaries with additional certification may notarize signatures that they witness via internet video, but I couldn’t find a notary who would do this for me. Getting the physician’s signature on the health report form notarized creates a challenge, since the examining physician does not sign the form at the initial visit, and they must wait for all labs and radiology report to come back before they can write their conclusions that you don’t have TB, etc.
So - the notarization requirement meant that I needed to arrange two visits to the hospital/clinic - the first for the actual examination, and the second for when the examining physician completes and signs TECO’s required health report form. TECO suggested that I hire a “mobile notary” for the second visit, which I did for about USD$120. I easily found one online, and arranged with my doctor and the notary for the three of us to meet when my doctor was ready to sign the form. I met the notary at the clinic and we went in to meet the physician, who then signed the form in the presence of the notary.
Be sure to follow TECO’s instructions to the t. The Chinese instructions are clearer and more precise than the English. Also, remember that the authentication process at TECO Washington, D.C. for the notary’s signature and for the “no criminal record” report (from the FBI) can take weeks, so be sure to budget plenty of time before you need to leave for Taiwan. Expedited service is available with a fee. BTW, my insurance paid for most of the cost of the exam.
Thank you Scupper for your thorough and detailed response. This makes me question what I’ve discovered through my visit to the UW hospital, and my doctors office, which is part of the UW Medicine network, located in a separate clinic building down the road. I actually brought the health form into the hospital to the records and admittance department and spoke to a couple people, one of which was a notary I believe. According to the people at the hospital, they would be able to sign as notary once I have the form completed by my doctor. But now that I’ve read your post and wondering if that’s going to be possible given the information you provided about the notary needing to being present during the doctors signing. I guess I had the same question in the back of my mind when I spoke to the hospital, but they seemed fairly positive and clear about that not being problem.
My doctor’s office likewise didn’t seem to think this would be a problem either.
I currently have two appointments—one for the actual lab tests and the other for a follow up with my doctor for going over the results and the signing of the forms. Seems I may need to investigate this a little further.
I’d say to just do it in Taiwan; it’s allowed, but you have to go to specific hospitals, which was $1,200 (about $38 USD) for one that happens to be fairly close to the house.
There’s also no notarization required doing it here; even just the far-fetched mobile notary idea that TECO came up with is almost 4x more than the entire exam (are they freaking insane? That sounds like a freaking hassle!), I’m sure the US exam is probably $100+, and there’s no way in hell insurance will cover it!