The recent increase in hospitals that provide Chinese medicine treatments has prompted the Department of Health to launch a new evaluation system to assess them, a health official said yesterday.
Huang Lin-huang (黃林煌), chairman of the department’s Committee on Chinese Medicine and Pharmacy, said the number of traditional Chinese medicine hospitals and hospital-affiliated clinics has increased from between 20 and 30 a decade ago to 96 today, which means there is now a greater need for a more holistic and higher quality evaluation program.
TEACHING HOSPITALS
The evaluations will take place between this month and May, Huang said and the “results will serve as a criteria for hospitals that want to become teaching hospitals.”
Hospitals with high scores would have more opportunities to participate in government--related projects, he said.
The evaluation will rate each hospital’s patient safety practices, quality of care, hospital management, environment and service quality, and human resources.
At present, 45 Chinese medicine hospitals have signed up for the evaluation program.
OPTING OUT
Half of the hospitals have not applied. Huang said this was either because these hospitals did not meet qualifications or they did not submit all the required documents. As a result, these hospitals will be excluded from consideration for teaching hospital status.
Huang said that National Yang-ming University Hospital, one of the largest teaching hospitals in Taiwan, did not have enough physicians in its division of Chinese medicine to apply for the evaluation.
To qualify, a hospital must have a team of at least four doctors in Chinese medicine.
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