Total Knee Arthroplasty for Medical Tourism in Taiwan- A Walk-in Service

臺灣的全膝關節置換旅遊醫療 -走出來的服務

王子康(Tze-Hong Wong)

指導教授 ： 黎正中

國立清華大學/科技管理學院/高階主管經營管理碩士在職專班/碩士(2008年)

https://doi.org/10.6843/NTHU.2008.00744

摘要

To define simply, Medical Tourism is a travelling abroad to seek for high quality of medical care at affordable prices and reasonable waiting time. With rapid growth and expansion in medical tourism industry, Taiwan stands in a far behind situation compare with her neighborhood countries such as Thailand, Singapore. We have not been actively participated in the globalization current and do not take the advantages of the rapid growth in China economic activities. As a consequence, golden timing for medical tourism escaped from our finger tips in the last decade. We have no time to waste and should modify with accelerated paces to return to the competitive track for this 100 billion USD industry in the next few years.

We try to focus our target on Chinese medical tourist and review the possibility by taking Total Knee Arthroplasty-- TKA (an orthopedic procedure which replaces the destructed cartilage in degenerative knee joint with knee prosthesis) as a main item for development of medical tourism in Taiwan. We would like to call it “a walk-in service”. Along with the study, a solid case we operated for a woman who travelled from Urumqi, China to Hsin Chu, Taiwan for a bilateral TKA and met her 50-year missed mother would stand for an excellent example. In this case we found plenty of improvements should be made for a better medical tourism service as it should be. TKA in medical point of view as well as medical tourism in economical point of view will be described Individually. How they could be bundled as a whole would also be figured out.
Some questions concerning about TKA medical tourism for Taiwan namely Technical, Financial, Competitiveness and Political aspect will be the keys for the case study. With the discussion and the complete picture of the case, further issues need to be tackled to make this procedure more promising and possible in Taiwan medical tourism industry. Inevitably, some more critical questions will be raised for solutions.

Key words: TKA, Walk-in service, Medical tourism.

關鍵字

全膝關節置換 ； 醫療旅遊 ； 走出來的服務

並列摘要

簡單而言，旅遊醫療被定義為在他國接受高品質,但價格與等候時間更能被接受的醫療照料。近年來的醫療旅遊不斷快速發展,但台灣卻遠遠落後於諸如泰國、新加坡等鄰近國家。

在這股全球化的潮流中,台灣並未及積極參與,也未能在中國大陸經濟崛起中得益。實際上,發展旅遊醫療的黃金時機,已在過去十年□不知不覺在我們指間溜走,我們再無法有些許的延誤,好應調整並加速步伐,重回競技跑道上,在角逐這未來四年內一千億美元的大餅。

在聚集於中國醫療旅遊客的同時,我們以”走出來的服務”為口號提供全膝關節置換（骨科手術以人工關節器材替換原來受損之關節面）作為主打台灣旅遊醫療的目標。

文中將敍述一個真實來台經驗全膝關節置換的例子,趙女士自烏魯木齊到台灣來接受一次雙膝人工關節置換並與五十多年來未曾謀面的母親相會的感人經過。我們發覺多方需要改善之處,以達到更優質旅遊醫療的目的。在技術及醫療面的如何結合亦將提出討論。

在優劣勢分析中,全膝關節旅遊醫療的各種構面,包括技術、財務、競爭以及政治面均一一被探討,從上述例子的探索,將發現更多有待解決的問題,以使這項有潛力的醫療服務能達到盡善盡美更能走出一片天,成為所謂走出來的服務。無可避免地,更多尖銳而必要的問題將與讀者一起共同分析討論。
（本文以case study方法撰寫）

關鍵字：全膝關節置換
醫療旅遊, 走出來的服務

並列關鍵字

TKA ； Walk-in service ； Medical tourism

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