Taiwan - Creating new values in healthcare: health promoting hospitals

Citation

(2008), "Taiwan - Creating new values in healthcare: health promoting hospitals", International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Vol. 21 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijhcqa.2008.06221fab.006

Taiwan - Creating new values in healthcare: health promoting hospitals

Article Type: News and views From: International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Volume 21, Issue 6

Keywords Health promotion by preventive principle, Early treatment, Health care quality, Active intervention

The Bureau of Health Promotion of the Department of Health, the Executive Yuan, held The 1st National Conference on Health Promoting Hospitals in Taiwan at the Taiwan Adventist Hospital. Dr Hanne Tonnesen, Head of WHO HPH Secretariat and Director of the WHO Collaborating centre Promoting Hospital International Network, came to Taiwan to award the accreditation certificate to 17 health-promoting hospitals that have passed accreditation this year.

What is a health promoting hospital? A health promoting hospital incorporates health promotion concepts, values and standards into its organizational culture and daily routines. It allows all of the hospitals employees and their families, patients and their families, and the community residents to participate in health promotion together, seeking to achieve the goal of health promotion by preventive principle, that is, better early treating those not yet sick than treating those already sick. For example, during the tobacco hazards prevention campaigns held by the Pingtung Christian Hospital for community residents, if one was found to have smoking addiction, he/she would be provided with referral for counselling services. In addition, the outpatient smoking reminder system would be used when the residents come to visit outpatient clinics. The system is targeted at smokers and activated every three months to provide proactively further outpatient physician service for smoking cessation. The Disease Control Unit of the hospital would also list the smokers for follow-up and monitoring and provide outpatient consultation and health education. As for the health promotion of employees within the hospital, an excellent example would be the Cardinal Tien Hospital Yung Ho Branch. Through the health-promoting program of hospital, the proportion of female employees aged 30 and above undergone Pap smear has increased from 30 to 80 per cent, while those aged 50 and above undergone mammography screening has reached 82 per cent. Moreover, one of the employees was early detected to have stage zero stage breast cancer and recovered well after proper treatment.

The international Network of Health Promoting Hospitals and Health Services is one of the WHO Collaborating Centres. Currently, altogether there are more than 600 hospitals in the network. In order to promote our peoples health, increase medical care quality, and participate with world health activities, the Bureau of Health Promotion has being dedicated in pushing the health promoting hospital program. Last year and the year before, five hospitals have already been accredited by the said organization to be health promoting hospitals. The National Yang Ming University has also joined efforts with the Yuanpei University and various hospitals to push the Taiwan Health Promoting Hospital Network.

In 2007, 17 hospitals have obtained accreditation. They will continue to devote to the mission of health promoting hospitals and provide the public with both treatment and health care services. They also value their employees’ health and provide the community residents with more comprehensive health and medical care network services.

In comparison to the active approach of the international communities for health promoting hospitals, Taiwan is still at its initial stage. Therefore, the Bureau of Health Promotion seeks to facilitate hospitals that are willing to indulge in health promotion through the health promoting hospital network program. This is the one of the various ways that Taiwan health care quality can be keep up with the world, thus objective of promoting peoples health can be achieved.

For more information, please visit: www.bhp.doh.gov.tw