2.1 Patient-Centered Services
Chung Shan Medical University Hospital upholds the core values of “caring for people, caring for patients, and caring with heart,” and is committed to establishing a patient-centered care model. Starting from the patient’s perspective, we simplify processes, enhance information transparency, and continuously improve the healthcare experience through cross-departmental collaboration and patient feedback.
We promote patient participation in care decisions and implement personalized services, transforming the doctor-patient relationship from one-way treatment to a collaborative partnership. Moving forward, we will continue to strengthen digital applications and integrated care, realizing a people-centered sustainable medical vision and becoming a trusted health partner in an aging society.
Feedback Channels
Our hospital has established a Social Service Office as the dedicated unit for receiving feedback from patients and their families. Professional social workers with empathy and communication skills are responsible for listening to opinions, handling issues promptly, and providing responses.
The public can provide feedback through suggestion boxes, phone calls, the director’s mailbox, social media, or by visiting various departments in person. We have also established a Standard Operating Procedure for Public Feedback, which clearly defines the principles and processes for handling different types of feedback, including compliments, suggestions, complaints, and cases that cannot be processed.
Patient Experience Survey
Our hospital conducts regular annual surveys on the medical experience of outpatients, emergency patients, and inpatients, using both paper-based and online methods simultaneously. We continuously analyze satisfaction results and identify key areas for improvement. For example, measures such as adding additional blood draw counters and implementing quality control circles to improve the laboratory waiting process have significantly enhanced patient satisfaction.
The survey results are also used as management indicators for various departments and are reviewed by the Medical Quality and Patient Safety Committee. After formulating improvement plans, the Medical Quality Center continuously monitors their implementation to achieve comprehensive service optimization.
Distinctive Friendly Services
1.Diverse and Digital Health Education Information
To enhance patients’ health literacy and access to medical information, our hospital is committed to building a diverse and real-time health education information delivery system. By integrating digital platforms and onsite facilities, we provide patients and the public with comprehensive and user-friendly health education services, such as illustrated materials.
2.Intelligent and Friendly Healthcare Environment
To create an intelligent and friendly working environment, our hospital has proactively engaged in cross-domain collaboration, combining clinical nursing expertise, artificial intelligence, cloud services, and innovative technologies such as Microsoft Azure OpenAI ChatGPT. In July 2023, we successfully launched Taiwan’s first intelligent assisted nursing information platform — “Xiao Nan Ah Chang.” This platform was granted a Taiwan patent (Invention No. 884563) in May 2025. Its diverse intelligent clinical applications currently include multilingual health education and a nursing assistant feature, supporting six languages and over 3,000 health education leaflets. It effectively resolves the language barriers nurses face in multilingual health education and helps novice nurses and nursing interns quickly query and understand nursing care, technical operations, and instrument handling standards in real time.
Additionally, in 2024, the AI Center led the “Yi Dian Jia” team to participate in the first “GenAI Stars Industry Application Competition” organized by the National Science and Technology Council, winning the Innovation and Entrepreneurship “Gold Award.” “Yi Dian Jia” is a comprehensive platform that supports smart summary records, generating AI-assisted nursing admission notes instantly. This improves information continuity with enhanced timeliness, safety, and accuracy. Through intelligent tools, it reduces staff burden and elevates care quality, achieving smart healthcare that balances technology and humanity.
3.Mobile Services and Onsite Assistance
To strengthen patients’ medical experience and service efficiency, our hospital has introduced a mobile care service mechanism to embody proactive and thoughtful care. Volunteers in the outpatient department actively guide patients daily to navigate the hospital, with complete duty schedules available for inquiry. Besides volunteers, administrative supervisors regularly patrol service areas according to schedules to listen actively to patient needs and promptly record feedback in the administrative inspection system, ensuring timely and effective responses. For pregnant women, patients with mobility difficulties, and seniors over 80, dedicated “Care Counters” with clear signage provide priority services, realizing patient-centered care and enhancing friendliness in medical visits.
4.Convenience Service Optimization and Digitalization
To improve the convenience and efficiency of medical services, our hospital actively promotes process and payment mechanism optimization, demonstrating smart healthcare achievements. Administrative fees are fully transparent, and no administrative fees are charged for the 2nd and 3rd chronic prescription refills, easing patient burdens. Blood test reports can be checked free of charge via the e-Point app, strengthening digital service touchpoints. The hospital provides 24-hour admission and discharge services throughout the year, with holiday seamless service at the emergency counter, ensuring uninterrupted care. Simultaneously, self-service kiosks, apps, and online payment have been implemented; from 2021 to 2024, non-counter payment rates increased from 3.23% to 27.67%, and the slow prescription pickup usage reached 95%, greatly enhancing public convenience. In response to digital transformation and manpower adjustments, our hospital balances quality and efficiency, embodying intelligent governance through resource integration.
2.3 Medical Quality
Medical Quality Governance
Chung Shan Medical University Hospital upholds the service spirit of “taking from society, giving back to society,” continuously strengthening patient safety and medical quality. Under the supervision of Chung Shan Medical University, the hospital director regularly attends mid- to long-term university development plan review meetings every six months, participates in university affairs meetings and board of directors meetings quarterly to report hospital operations and management outcomes. In addition, dedicated board members attend the hospital’s management meetings quarterly to enhance supervision of the implementation effectiveness of medical quality and patient safety policies through regular participation and review, and to provide recommendations based on the hospital’s overall development goals. The board also provides abundant academic and research resources, fully supporting the hospital’s quality improvement and sustainable development.
The Medical Quality and Patient Safety Committee serves as the hospital’s highest decision-making core for quality management. It is chaired by the hospital superintendent, with the deputy director of the Medical Quality Center as vice-chair, nursing supervisors and senior physicians serving as executive officers. Additionally, experts in medical quality and patient safety are invited as advisors to provide professional guidance. The committee comprises eight functional working groups, each led by a physician. Members span various professional categories, totaling 30 individuals, and include two public representatives—one legal expert and one volunteer. The committee holds regular meetings to report resolutions and execution results, ensuring diverse perspectives participate in decision-making.
According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s 2024–2025 “Eight Major Work Goals for Medical Quality and Patient Safety,” our hospital has established a bidirectional quality governance structure that operates both top-down and bottom-up. The Medical Quality and Patient Safety Committee serves as the central decision-making body, with the Medical Quality Center responsible for coordination and execution. This structure integrates institutionalized mechanisms such as incident reporting, Root Cause Analysis (RCA), and quality indicator management to oversee functional teams in promoting cross-departmental collaboration and continuous improvement.
At the same time, clinical staff are encouraged to proactively identify problems and propose improvement plans. Through platforms such as quality proposals, internal unit reviews, and cross-unit seminars, a bottom-up participation mechanism is implemented to ensure frontline experiences are reflected in decision-making, creating a two-way quality culture loop.
Each unit executes quality action plans based on their operational characteristics, utilizing the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle and on-site audits to enforce policy implementation, track progress, and realize the concept of patient-centered safe care.
2.4 Medication Safety
Pharmacy Committee Operation and Pharmacy Service Team
Our hospital has a professional Pharmacy Committee established according to the “Pharmacy Committee Organizational Charter,” responsible for formulating drug use regulations. The committee reviews drug usage and new drug applications quarterly. Members of the committee come from various professional fields. The Chief of the Hospital serves as the chairperson, and the Director of the Pharmacy Department acts as the executive secretary to ensure proper operation of drug management systems.
The pharmacy service team consists of 94 professionally trained pharmacists who handle medication dispensing and delivery for outpatient, emergency, and inpatient care throughout the hospital. They also provide medication reconciliation, medication counseling and consultation, drug therapy monitoring, and blood drug concentration monitoring, ensuring safe and effective medication use. Pharmacists follow regulations to perform various pharmaceutical care services such as medication therapy management, allergy alerts, and adverse drug reaction reporting. They also provide professional advice in cross-department collaborations to guarantee patient medication safety and overall treatment efficacy.
Intelligent Equipment and Safety Management
Our hospital actively promotes innovative technologies to improve medication safety and management efficiency. Through the “ADC Intelligent Calculation Program,” we manage 31 Automated Dispensing Cabinets (ADC) hospital-wide, achieving visualized and precise risk control of medication management. This innovative system effectively enhances medication accuracy and won the National Innovation Awards in 2020 and 2022 for “Visualized Risk Precise Control—Improving Medication Safety.” The pharmacy team works with intelligent cabinets and ADC calculation systems for medication storage and dispensing management, using multiple cross-check technologies to strengthen tracking and verification, significantly reducing medication errors and ensuring accuracy and patient safety.
Special Medication Dispensing and Medication Safety Management
According to the “2020 Taiwan Hazardous Drug Handling Standards,” the hospital has equipped negative and positive pressure dispensing rooms meeting standards. These are used to prepare chemotherapy drugs, Total Parenteral Nutrition (TPN), and patient-controlled analgesia medications. Pharmacists actively participate in the nutritional management of TPN patients and conduct professional research on special cases, publishing 15 papers related to TPN care.
To ensure medication safety, dedicated monitoring indicators and evaluation mechanisms are established. The dispensing near-miss rate averaged 0.09% in 2023 and 0.08% in 2024; real dispensing errors were notably controlled at low levels with 2 cases in 2023 (approximately 0.41 per million dispenses), and zero errors in 2024, significantly below the management standard of fewer than 1 error per million dispenses. This demonstrates our hospital’s high precision and excellence in medication dispensing safety.
Medication Education and Promotion
When patients collect medications, clear discharge medication instructions are provided along with verbal counseling in professional consultation rooms to help patients understand proper medication use. Pharmacists follow the “Three Checks and Five Rights” procedure to ensure accurate dispensing every time. A medication incident reporting system is in place with monthly rewards to encourage staff to report and improve proactively. Reported incidents increased from 1,919 in 2023 to 2,396 in 2024, continuously earning recognition from patient safety audits.
For patient-provided medications, after clinical staff assessment for usability, physicians issue orders, and pharmacists consolidate medication histories for evaluation to ensure patient safety. If ongoing medication use is needed, the system reminds pharmacists, who provide verbal education upon dispensing and further consultation as necessary, ensuring comprehensive patient care.
Additionally, we developed an exclusive intelligent assistant platform called “Xiao Nan Ah Chang,” which translates educational materials into six languages, providing a friendly healthcare experience. The platform includes a hospital-wide database of foreign language, lip-reading, and sign language interpreters, braille educational materials, simultaneous captioning services, and labor bureau contracted interpreters, ensuring communication accessibility for patients with special needs.
Besides general pharmacist consultations, dedicated pharmacists and consultation rooms offer detailed medication guidance and drug information. Telephone medication consultation services are available for outpatient or discharged patients, allowing patients to communicate with pharmacists by phone for appropriate medication advice.
Controlled Substances Management
Our hospital strictly manages controlled substances under professional supervision by the “Controlled Substances Management Committee,” which meets every four months to oversee hospital-wide controlled substances management and case reviews. All controlled substances (51 items, Schedule 1 to 4) are stored in specialized locked cabinets with key or electronic locks and monitored by surveillance systems. Shift handovers include inventory counts, and pharmacists conduct monthly audits. The medication management system uses a “Visualized Risk Dashboard ADC+S” to monitor drug quantities and expiration dates, ensuring a first-expiry-first-out policy. These rigorous management measures demonstrate our hospital’s professionalism and effectiveness in controlled substance management, continuously striving to provide the safest and most compliant medication environment. Control measures include:
- Controlled Substance Prescription: Physicians must hold a “Controlled Substance Use License Number” to prescribe controlled substances, comply with required documentation fields, and keep records for five years. Residual controlled substances are destroyed jointly by unit managers and witnesses with documented procedures.
- Questionable Prescriptions and Incident Reporting: Pharmacists review questionable prescriptions and communicate with physicians. Incident reports numbered 1,919 in 2023 and 2,396 in 2024, covering improper prescriptions and duplicate medication, continuously recognized by patient safety audits.
- Anesthetic Drug Use Control: For non-cancer patients on long-term addictive anesthetic drugs, the system reminds physicians to report cases for initial review by the Controlled Substances Committee to ensure compliance. Quarterly tracking and review of patient medication status, multimodal pain management, and follow-up pain assessments are conducted.
- Optimized Management System: The hospital actively uses systems to manage anesthetic and addictive drugs electronically, ensuring transparent and standardized usage and handling. Hospital policies emphasize rational drug use with real-time alerts and controls to reduce abuse risks and ensure patient safety.
2.5 Medical Care
Community Health Care
Through the “Community Health Care Center,” we integrate internal and external hospital resources to actively promote health in the central Taiwan region (Changhua, Nantou, Taichung). Services include cancer screening, smoking cessation, chronic disease management, and palliative care, establishing a solid local health support network. The hospital concurrently promotes health education activities such as outpatient education, patient support groups, and maternal classes to continuously enhance public health literacy and self-care abilities.
Considering uneven distribution of medical resources in Heping District, we provide free mobile medical services. For areas lacking Western medicine resources, a “partial copayment of only 50 NTD” scheme is designed to reduce patient burden. We also promote integrated community screening, offering free screening for the four major cancers to lower early diagnosis barriers. Additionally, members of the Chung Shan Medical Group enjoy friendly discounts on food, lodging, education, and entertainment, embodying a people-centered, comprehensive care philosophy.