Donald F. Gotcher

Objective: To provide comprehensive patient-centered care, we need multidisciplinary teams to face challenges of advanced and complex care. The Taichung Veterans General Hospital has had a ward-based multidisciplinary team system in each ward for 10 years. This study aimed to investigate whether better team performance results in a more positive response in patient safety culture (PSC). Design/Setting: From 2014 to 2017, there were 21 ward-based multidisciplinary teams. We organized an evaluation panel to assess the performance of the teams. Those teams were divided into 3 groups: high, medium, and low according to their annual performance scores. The Taichung Veterans General Hospital used annual Safety Attitude Questionnaire–based surveys concerning patient safety issues. We used the generalized estimating equation to analyze the dataset over 4 years. All analyses were carried out using SAS Version 9.4 (SAS Institute, Cary, NC). Results: Taking the trend effects from 2014 to 2017 into account, we found that teamwork climate, safety climate, and perception of management were significantly better in the high and medium groups of the ward-based multidisciplinary teams. There was no significant difference in the dimensions of job satisfaction, stress recognition, and working conditions, which suggests that all staff had the same degree of stress or work loading. Conclusions: Our ward-based multidisciplinary team system had a positive effect on PSC, which demonstrates the following: when team performance is better, patient safety climate is also better. We should keep the ward-based multidisciplinary team system, improve its performance, and maximize positive attitudes about PSC among our staff.

Study Objective: Overcrowding in emergency departments (ED) is an increasingly common problem in Taiwanese hospitals, and strategies to improve efficiency are in demand. We propose a bed resource allocation strategy to overcome the overcrowding problem. Method: We investigated ED occupancy using discrete-event simulation and evaluated the effects of suppressing day-to-day variations in ED occupancy by adjusting the number of empty beds per day. Administrative data recorded at the ED of Taichung Veterans General Hospital (TCVGH) in Taiwan with 1500 beds and an annual ED volume of 66,000 visits were analyzed. Key indices of ED quality in the analysis were the length of stay and the time in waiting for outward transfers to in-patient beds. The model is able to analyze and compare several scenarios for finding a feasible allocation strategy. Results: We compared several scenarios, and the results showed that by reducing the allocated beds for the ED by 20% on weekdays, the variance of daily ED occupancy was reduced by 36.25% (i.e., the percentage of reduction in standard deviation). Conclusions: This new allocation strategy was able to both reduce the average ED occupancy and maintain the ED quality indices.

Emergency department crowding has been one of the main issues in the health system in Taiwan. Previous studies have usually targeted the process improvement of patient treatment flow due to the difficulty of collecting Emergency Department (ED) staff data. In this study, we have proposed a hybrid model with Discrete Event Simulation, radio frequency identification applications, and activity-relationship diagrams to simulate the nurse movement flows and identify the relationship between different treatment sections. We used the results to formulate four facility layouts. Through comparing four scenarios, the simulation results indicated that 2.2 km of traveling distance or 140 min of traveling time reduction per nurse could be achieved from the best scenario.

This paper investigates how a healthcare network in Taiwan uses a practical cloud image data center (CIDC) to communicate with its constituent hospital branches. A case study approach was used. The study was carried out in the central region of Taiwan, with four hospitals belonging to the Veterans Hospital healthcare network. The CIDC provides synchronous and asynchronous consultation among these branches. It provides storage, platforms, and services on demand to the hospitals. Any branch-client can pull up the patient’s medical images from any hospital off this cloud. Patients can be examined at the branches, and the images and reports can be further evaluated by physicians in the main Taichung Veterans General Hospital (TVGH) to enhance the usage and efficiency of equipment in the various branches, thereby shortening the waiting time of patients. The performance of the CIDC over 5 years shows: (1) the total number of cross-hospital images accessed with CDC in the branches was 132,712; and (2) TVGH assisted the branches in keying in image reports using the CIDC 4,424 times; and (3) Implementation of the system has improved management, efficiency, speed and quality of care. Therefore, the results lead to the recommendation of continuing and expanding the cloud computing architecture to improve information sharing among branches in the healthcare network.

This study examined whether social capital can enhance an individual's ability in reducing emotional exhaustion and job tension when medical professionals encounter a crisis such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).