Areas of Excellence

Health Policy Analysis

The scope of health policies may include health equity (health disparity), financing and delivery of health care, and quality of care at the population level. Health policy research is a multidisciplinary scientific investigation on how social factors, financing systems, organizational structures, and health technologies affect the quality and cost of health care as well as quantity and quality of life. Our courses on health policy introduce public policy fundamentals in a systematic approach, including problem structuring, policy formulation, policy implementation, and policy evaluation, with an emphasis on analysis ability for each formation process. With a dual focus on theory and practice, the health policy courses provide students with the knowledge of the background, legitimation, and impact of public policy and also their potential future career in the health policy field.

Health Policy Evaluation

We evaluate the effectiveness and influence of health policies implemented by government or the National Health Insurance Administration, and find the associated factors with the effectiveness of the policies. The research grants in this field consist of the effect of pay-for-performance (PFP) programs on tuberculosis, asthma, and diabetes patients, the impact of multidisciplinary team (MDT) care on quality of care and survival in cancer patients, and reforms in medical payment for chronic kidney disease. Besides, we also focus on health disparity issues among the economically or physically disadvantaged groups such as the disabled, aborigines, residents in rural areas, low income household, and prisoners.

Hospital Strategy Management

Competitive Strategy, Blue Ocean Strategy, Strategic Alliance and Balanced scorecard are areas of teaching and research focus.

Hospital Quality Management and Patient Safety

Hospital quality management focuses on the quality of patient-centered care. In our research on hospital quality management, we emphasize on the association between hospital quality management and medical care, the influence of health insurance and hospital management, human resources management, medical quality management, cost control, and material management.

TQM, COI, Benchmarking, SERVQUAL service gap model, HFMEA, TeamSTEPPS, and Patient Safety Culture are also areas of teaching and research focus.

Pharmacoepidemiology

Pharmacoepidemiology is a discipline that applies epidemiological methodologies to the study of drug use, especially on the safety of drug use in many specific groups of population.

Pharmacoeconomics

Pharmacoeconomics is a discipline that explores the patterns of drug expenditures and their related resources allocation in the healthcare fields.

Medical Data Mining

Aside from the traditional statistical analysis, data mining is another method for health care research. Using data extracted from health care services, medical insurance claims, or hospital management, models in prediction, classification, and implicit relationships can be developed. Classification models for medical utilization of mental disorder patients, acceptance analysis of electronic patient record users, and prediction models for substance abuse of adolescence are examples of medical data mining research from our department.

Healthcare Marketing Research

In our healthcare marketing related research, we primarily place our emphasis on the subject of provider-patient relationship marketing and provider-patient communication.

Health Communication Management

In recent years, we have conducted research on the field of health communication in line with health promotion efforts. The research emphasis addresses real-world health concerns and significant problems such as cancer screening promotion, health behavior promotion and substantial health behavior of chronic disease patients.

Cancer Care Research

Cancer care research encompasses a multidisciplinary field of scientific investigation. It examines how social factors, financing systems, external environment, cancer prevention and early diagnosis, government policies, health technologies, and healthcare provider and individual behaviors affect cancer outcomes, access to and quality of care, cancer care costs, and the health and well-being of cancer patients and survivors.

Nursing Management

Nursing management is the management process and leadership of nursing. We focus on organizational concepts and structures, development of personnel, staffing and scheduling, evaluation and discipline of personnel, continuous quality improvement, communication and conflict management, and cost containment and marketing.

Organizational Theory and Design in Health Care Organizations

Organizational theory is a discipline in sociology which explores and explains the phenomena, design, and effectiveness of organizations from a macro perspective. Through the application of organization theories, we have devoted to the studies on integrated health networks such as Primary Community Care Network and hospital systems to explore the effects of organization design on performance.

Organizational Behaviors in Health Care Organizations

Organizational behavior is a multidisciplinary area to explore and explain employee behaviors across the schools of psychology, sociology, social psychology, anthropology, and politics. It aims to identify the factors to determine employees’ work motivation, performance and well-beings. Through the application of organizational behavior theories, we have done the studies on organizational culture, leadership, motivation, job design, physical work environments, generation and values, communication, power, work stress, work health, and quality of work life for medical professionals.

Health Systems and Global Health

The vision of a sustainable health system is universal. Our team tackles this issue primarily through two major dimensions, economics and policies. While economics can provide insights into financing and payment problems, structural and political context can help explain policy choices and assess their related consequences. Through evidence-based health policy-making and rigorous analysis of the dynamics of health care systems in Taiwan and other countries around the world, we aim to shed some light on real-world health system problems, through quantitative skills and methods in evaluation science, epidemiology and biostatistics.