Page 8 - 臺大管理論叢第33卷第1期

tems” in the field of hospital management and healthcare administration by Tsai intends to
explore whether Long-term Care (LTC) services provided by Taiwan’s current tax-funded
Long-term Care (LTC) Plan 2.0 can fulfill the expectations of those needed the services,
and to examine the preference differences between the tax-funded LTC system and the
mandatory public LTC insurance system. Through a nationwide survey, Tsai aims to deter-
mine whether the financial burden associated with LTC services is mitigated through the
individuals’ “demand for LTC insurance,” “willingness to pay,” and “precautionary saving
motives”; whether these three financial-related behaviors (factors) significantly influence
an individual’s choice of LTC systems. Tsai eventually finds that those who exhibit high
levels of the three behaviors tend to prefer the public LTC insurance system; this group of
people are predominantly aged 40 to 64, male, married, working-class, earning less than
NT$1,990,000 annually, genuinely worried about their longevity, and anxious about hav-
ing to make future LTC payments.
The fifth article “The Effect of Applying Clinical Pathways on Medical Resource
Utilization among Patients Undergoing a Thyroidectomy” in the field of hospital
management and healthcare administration by Pan, Lin, Tang, Yan, Lin, and Hsu is a
retrospective observational study aiming to assess the effects of Clinical Pathways (CPs)
on medical resource utilization, particularly on the practice of thyroidectomy. They
evaluate a total of 376 case payments for thyroidectomies operating in an academic
medical center by General Surgeons (GS) or Ear, Nose, and Throat (ENT) doctors from
2001 to 2003; compare differences between pre- and post-CPs implementation in terms of
medical costs and Length of Stay (LOS). They find: (1) after the implementation of CPs,
the reductions in LOS (31.90%) and in medical expenditure (14.98%) within the general
surgery (GS) department are statistically significant; (2) the medical resource utilization
in the GS division with CPs is significantly lower than that in the ENT division without
implementing CPs. This study demonstrates that CPs help reduce hospital costs and
improve the standard of medical care for patients.

Hsiou-Wei Lin
San-Lin Chung
Chih-Ping Wei