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FEATURE: How Wang reshaped the nation’s healthcare system

Susan Wang, left, daughter of the late Wang Yung-ching, carries a photo of her father after Wang’s body was returned to Taiwan yesterday. PHOTO: CNA

The “God of Business,” whose enterprises stretched from plastics and petrochemicals to high technology and biomedical sciences, was also instrumental in reshaping the nation’s medical map.

Wang Yung-ching (王永慶), founder of Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團) — the most financially successful business group in the country — died in New Jersey on Thursday at the age of 91.

Wang founded the Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in Taipei in 1976 to provide healthcare for the middle-class and less privileged citizens, for whom there was no access to affordable good medical care prior to the 1970s.

The Chang Gung Memorial Hospital was Taiwan’s first general hospital for ordinary people and the first teaching hospital at which doctors would not expect “red envelopes” from the relatives of their patients.

In establishing Chang Gung hospital, Wang spared no funds — earned from his business operations — hiring top-notch medical professionals and management personnel from both home and abroad.

At the same time, he also established a medical university and a nursing college to train medical professionals.

In less than 30 years, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital — which now has branches in Linkou (林口), Kaohsiung County, Taipei County, Keelung City and Xiamen, China — has become the largest hospital in Taiwan in terms of its number of beds and doctors, and is considered the nation’s best medical institution in terms of business management.

Inspired by Chang Gung’s successful business management model, other privately owned hospitals have been established around the nation in the past decade, a development that has reshaped Taiwan’s medical map. In the 1970s, the ratio of public to private hospitals was eight to two, but that figure has since been reversed and is now two to eight.

As the biggest hospital chain, Chang Gung hospitals now have the largest number of National Health Insurance Program (NHIP) holders, commanding between 8 percent and 9 percent of NHIP expenditure, an average of around NT$450 billion (US$13.88 billion) a year.

The Chang Gung business model has inspired National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH) — the nation’s top public teaching hospital — to change its management style.

Emulating Chang Gung, several years ago NTUH began to expand its operations and now has many branches scattered around the country.

In his bid to make Chang Gung a first-class medical institution, Wang installed the most advanced equipment and facilities at the hospitals. The facilities included an operating theater and ward exclusively for patients with congenital heart disease, an operating theater and ward exclusively for children with craniofacial defects and a clinic for the implant of electronic ears for children with acoustic nerve defects.

Wang, who was a victim of streptococcus pneumoniae, donated NT$500 million earlier this year so that people over the age of 75 could receive the streptococcus pneumoniae vaccine for free.
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