Exploring Service Quality & Design of Cross-national Liver Transplantation Process: The Case of A Medical Center in Taipei City
Date Issued
2015
Date
2015
Author(s)
Huang, Sheng-yu
Abstract
Background & Purpose: With the mission to promote medical diplomacy and global health, a number of medical centers in Taiwan start to provide critical or intensive health services such as liver transplant surgeries for inbound medical tourists. Liver cancer is the second most common cancer in Southeast Asian countries where many people, with lower income or fewer medical resources and healthcare coverage, still lack access to treatment for serious illnesses. There are very few studies that analyze patient experience and service quality of medical tourists who come to Taiwan for surgical treatment. Almost no studies in Taiwan explore the experience of patients coming from Southeast Asian regions. This study collects integrative perspectives for three purposes: (1) To understand current processes and challenges of cross-national liver transplant surgeries (2) To explore service quality from in-depth experiences and feelings of patients and their family from the country of Myanmar (3) To provide preliminary suggestions for process improvement by benchmarking practices and experiences of other domestic hospitals. Methodology: This research uses qualitative in-depth interviews for data collection. The interviewees are divided into 3 groups: (1) international patients and family from Myanmar, (2) health providers and administrators from case-study hospital with relevant experience, and (3) health providers and administrators from other hospitals with relevant experience. Data analysis is conducted by using NVivo10 to code and categorize interview data, and form various emerged themes. Results: Interviews were conducted on 20 participants, including 1 patient who has undergone liver transplant surgery, 8 family members with previous or current accompanying experiences to hospitals; 5 participants from the case-study hospital, and 6 participants from other hospitals. The findings show that patient and family members have built a high degree of trust and sense of security towards the case-study hospital, and provided more positive feedback than suggestions on the service quality of the hospital. The case-study hospital interviewees all mentioned the limitations on internationalizing medical services due to the conservative business practice of a military hospital. Ten strategies of process improvement in medical tourism of surgical treatment are generated after conducting interviews with other experienced hospitals in Taiwan. Some interviewees from all three groups mention the difficulties and inconvenience of current medical visa policies, especially the regulations for specific areas such as Myanmar. Conclusion: During the process of seeking and receiving medical treatment abroad, patients not only consider healthcare quality and clinical skills as important, but also raise concerns about language translation services, communications, social resources at the destination area, and convenient access to the destination hospital or country. Hospitals planning to internationalize health service of serious illness could use process-based benchmarking and refer to the strategies of other experienced hospitals for creating a medical-tourist-friendly environment. The deregulation or adjustment of current medical visa policies for special areas could help improve the patients’ accessibility to medical treatment or major surgeries that require high level of skills.
Subjects
Medical Tourism
Service Quality
Patient Experience
Liver transplant Surgery
Process Management
SDGs
Type
thesis
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