Abstract
Facing the income ceiling policy, quality protocols, industry competition, and expanding financial burden among others, individual hospitals in Taiwan need to find ways to maximize its resources and minimize its costs in order to generate more profits. In spite of the fact that most of the Taiwan hospitals have adopted one method or another to help manage its administration or operation performance, the result seems partial and there is still a gap between available resources and overall integration. This study adopted the Total Resource Management (TRM) framework and aims to develop a systematic and effective Plan-Do-Check-Action (PDCA) methodology to optimize operational resources in the context of hospitals. By benchmarking proven successful models and standards in the medical industry, domestic hospitals are therefore able to sustain continuous growth by establishing its own advanced hospital management models. This Hospital Total Resource Management (HTRM) facilitates hospitals to examine the 5-M resources, which are man, machine, material, method, and money, in a more efficient and effective manner. First of all, the HTRM helps identify 11 fundamental objectives and 39 performance indexes from the 5-M resources in the hospital. Secondly, the HTRM requires all accountable to develop and implement feasible action plans to deliver the means objectives, which improves on the overall effectiveness. Finally, under the supervision by the HTRM working committee, all accountable must monitor, evaluate, improve, and report the progress on a regular basis, in order to meet up the fundamental objectives and performance indexes originally set by the hospital authority. The HTRM framework per se was introduced to a regional hospital located in Hsin-Chu, Taiwan, and successfully proved on its feasibility and validity through two case studies, which are respectively the OEE utilization analysis over the Whole Body System for Routine SPIRAL CT scanning, and the SMART procurement evaluation over major medical equipments in the hospital.