Designing a service portfolio for a Taiwanese hospital telecare center

Abstract

National Ministry of Health and Welfare defined Tele health care (Telecare) as a combination of medical care, ICT technology, electronic medical equipment, and other cross-cutting professional to allow people to get the health care and preventive health services in the community and familiar home environment and aging in place. To date, telecare has become the world medical technology and services industry trend. However, most elderly are significantly less familiar with technology use than the general population, inhibiting telecare adoption. Based on service portfolio concept, we design core and supplementary service elements for a Taiwanese telecare center. To further examine how patients perceive the values of these service elements in different adoption stages, we conduct surveys with potential clients and current patients of the telecare center. We take customers adoption process as an indicator of "value creation" and examine how the values of service elements vary across different adoption stages. Meanwhile, service quality and productivity should be properly integrated since quality focuses on the benefits created for the customer`s side of the equation, but productivity addresses the financial costs incurred by the hospital. If not properly integrated, these two foci can be in conflict. Thus, our service portfolio will consider not only the value of the services but also the available management resources to run the services. The results suggest approaches to re-allocating the limited resource to the most valuable service elements perceived by customers, and thus help hospitals to drive potential clients, sustain current patients, and maintain service quality of the hospital simultaneously.