The establishment of a TQM system for the health care industry

In recent years, the health care industry in Taiwan has been facing various difficulties, which are primarily from the implementation of National Health Care Insurance policy. The more severe problems, like the increase in operating costs and income reduction, are included with the high cut rate examined by BNHI, and the shortage of physicians. The most critical current issue to hospitals is researching the remedies to resolve the problems. Some hospitals have employed ISO 9000 as the solution; some have chosen HQIC or MQIP. However, it is necessary to implement advanced TQM when the health care institutes want to resolve these problems more effectively. There are some conflicts between the health care professional and the TQM concepts and practices. In this paper, a practically applicable system of TQM is developed for the health care institutes. Several hospitals have utilized this TQM system and have obtained many substantial results, such as upgrading the service quality and customers’ satisfaction, and improving the administration performance, etc. Therefore, for a more efficient operation, the Bureau of National Health Care should eagerly promote the TQM system to hospitals.