Seamless Patient Care

• Integrated Discharge Services

To enhance the continuity of care quality after patients are discharged and admitted to care institutions, and to facilitate bidirectional communication with post-hospital institutions, National Cheng Kung University Hospital established Taiwan’s first “Post-hospital Care Platform” in 2007. A comprehensive revision and optimization were completed in 2019 to enable discharge planning case managers to communicate in advance with patients’ families and the target care institutions regarding transfer arrangements. After the patient is admitted, the institution director can directly access the patient’s medical information on the platform (including basic information, outpatient appointments, indwelling catheters, wound status, discharge summary, physical examination reports, and key points for post-discharge care), thereby shortening the handover time between the hospital’s medical team and the care institution.

In addition to reducing the time and labor required for manual information transfer, the Post-hospital Care Platform also serves as a medium for quality control. After the patient has stayed in the institution for one week, the institution director must respond on the platform and report the patient’s care status to our hospital to ensure the patient continues to receive complete and continuous care after discharge.

In addition, the Discharge Planning Service Team of the Community Healthcare Center organizes two post-hospital care institution seminars each year. Professional lecturers from our hospital (e.g., the infection control team, hospice care team, wound care team, etc.) and institution directors are invited to conduct case discussions, professional courses, and exchange of opinions regarding referred patients. The professional knowledge and suggestions discussed during the meetings are compiled into records and uploaded onto the platform for institution directors to download and review. This helps establish a quality consultation mechanism between our hospital and care institutions to jointly safeguard the quality of patient care.

Properly Addressing Public Opinions

• Accessible Feedback Channels

The Hospital has established multiple channels for the public to express opinions, including written forms, dedicated phone lines, online submissions, and on-site channels. Among these, the Superintendent’s Mailbox not only provides prepaid return-written opinion forms but also includes 35 opinion boxes placed in prominent areas within the Hospital (16 in the outpatient building, 18 in the inpatient building, and 1 in the emergency department) for public submissions. These are collected daily by designated personnel except on holidays. Each submitted opinion is handled and tracked by dedicated staff from the Quality Center to provide prompt and appropriate handling and explanations, thereby enhancing physician-patient relationships and service quality.

To ensure timeliness in handling and responding to opinions, 100% of feedback cases are proactively contacted on the day of receipt for understanding and processing, with clarification and explanation provided immediately when necessary. The “case closure within one day rate” is used as a monitoring indicator and is reviewed quarterly at the Quality Center meeting. The system also automatically issues notification emails to relevant departments for joint handling and clarification. All cases are documented in the Customer Feedback Management Information System, with the entire process monitored and tracked to shorten service time.

According to the content of each public opinion case, related departments are requested to provide explanations, which must be confirmed by the respective department heads. The Quality Center then compiles and analyzes the responses and submits them to the Superintendent’s Office for approval. Once approved, the consolidated reply is issued to the complainant. Public acceptance rates have consistently remained above 80%.