LANDSEED Group Enhances Competitiveness with Outstanding Knowledge Management Establishing a model of excellence in the healthcare industry

From left: Mei-Hui Hsieh, Director of the Nursing Department of Landseed Hospital; Chung-Chih Huang, President of Landseed Hospital; Ling-Hua Chang, Vice-President of Landseed Hospital; and Li-Li Chen, Supervisor of Landseed Hospital.

Landseed Group provides holistic care full-process care, and is committed to creating a hospital without walls and has achieved many pioneering “firsts” from Taiwan to Asia. The Nursing Department of Landseed Hospital shared the application of knowledge management with “Wound Drainage Tube Care”, which won the first “2020 Knowledge Management Project Award” Institutional Category Award organized by SGS, a leader in Taiwan's testing and certification industry.
Founded in 1992, Landseed International Medicine Group (Landseed Group) is the first medical group in Taiwan to establish a hospital chain, with the vision of “holistic care for the whole person, dedicated to creating a hospital without walls”. In addition to medical services, the group’s services also span into hospital management, medical training, senior care, sports medicine and preventive medicine, etc. The wide range of services requires a good foundation of knowledge management, therefore, since 1996, the Group has initiated the first step of knowledge management, “standardization” management, to externalize tacit knowledge and establish a quality system of internal and external assessment, which includes hospital evaluation, international ISO certification, international service certification, SNQ (Symbol of National Quality), and various domestic certifications, as well as strict compliance with external inspections by competent authorities. Through the establishment of standardized documents, Landseed is committed to rationalizing its operations system and reducing the workload of employees.

Standardization to Maintain Sound Knowledge Management to “Enhance” Quality

With the expansion of the Group's transnational medical services, it has introduced the Vitals ESP Enterprise Knowledge Collaboration Platform since 2013 to enable rapid system replication, rapid knowledge deployment, and continuous quality improvement. Ms. Ling-Hua Chang, Assistant Vice President of the President's Office of Landseed Hospital, who is the Chief Convenor of Knowledge Management in the hospital, noted, “Standardization can help the 5th person do as well as the 1st person, while knowledge management can make the 100th person do better than the 1st person!” In terms of promotion, we first formulated the Group's Knowledge Management Procedures, and then applied the promotion framework of group, institutional and departmental hierarchy to expand the knowledge management to the Taoshin Branch of Landseed Hospital; Landseed International Hospital Shanghai Hexin Branch and Chenxin Branch; Landseed Health Center Chitwan, Nepal; as well as overseas offices in the United States, Japan, and Singapore.

Based on a well-established foundation of standardized processes, the Vitals ESP Enterprise Knowledge Collaboration Platform enables rapid parallel diffusion of problem-solving rules of thumb and shortens the learning curve, allowing local affiliates to acquire new knowledge and improve the quality of care in the shortest possible time. Chang further pointed out that “Landseed Group incorporates the spirit of PDCA in its daily operations and continues to improve standard practices and execution capabilities through the convenience of communication and interaction on the KM Platform, so as to achieve cross-country and cross-discipline knowledge diffusion and operational effectiveness.” In the process of KM introduction, it is necessary to unite internal staff, establish a consensus on knowledge management, make tacit knowledge conspicuous, and form a culture of knowledge sharing through a knowledge management platform that facilitates sharing and promotes systems design.

KM Optimizes Processes to Deliver World-Class Medical Quality

The Nursing Department of Landseed Hospital shared the application of knowledge management with “Wound Drainage Tube Care”, which won the first “2020 Knowledge Management Project Award” organized by SGS, a leader in the testing and certification industry in Taiwan. “Standardized documents allow colleagues to do things consistently, while knowledge-based documents allow colleagues to do things correctly and consistently. Applying knowledge management to patient clinical care can ensure patient safety and effectively improve the quality of care delivery,” said Mei-Hui Hsieh, Director of the Nursing Department.
​​
Since drainage tube abnormalities are the key items for monthly monitoring of nursing quality, the nursing department harnesses the power of knowledge management to inventory clinical wound drainage tube abnormalities, and completes wound drainage tube knowledge items by combining existing standardized documents, colleagues' clinical experience and literature reviews. Hsieh noted “Our original standardization documents were only KNOW-WHAT and KNOW-HOW, which only allowed us to maintain the current quality. To enhance our competitiveness, we must expand our knowledge, gain insight into the depth of knowledge of KNOW-WHY and CARE-WHY, enhance our ability to solve problems and improve operations, reduce the incidence of abnormalities, and improve the quality of care.” This is complemented by a complete audit system to review the degree of implementation, which effectively reduced the wound drainage tube abnormalities from 18.18% to 0%.

KM Is Like an Online Q&A That Leaves Discussion Records While Answering Questions

Vice President Chang recalled that “It is the hardest thing to develop a consensus on knowledge management and a culture of sharing at the outset.” Therefore, Landseed designed an incentive mechanism and arranged for senior colleagues to serve as demonstration knowledge seeds, gradually leading to a sharing culture.
 
Take the Nursing Department as an example; Mei-Hua Hsieh concedes that it is not easy to tap into tacit knowledge and it is a challenge to extract the tacit clinical care experience of nursing staff. Fortunately, the knowledge documents of Vitals ESP have a comments area for online discussion, which is convenient for nursing colleagues to ask and share their experience, and arrange senior team to answer questions online, so as to check whether there is any incomplete information through Q&A and also leave a track of the discussion process, and then spread out through the sharing mechanism such as Vitals ESP subscription, forwarding and mention functions. This allows the platform to greatly enhance the learning experience, increases the stickiness of the users and helps to propagate the KM culture.
 
Landseed Group has a strong presence in the Asia Pacific region, and through sound knowledge management, it is able to pass on a high quality healthcare delivery model, quickly replicate successful experiences, and break down cross-organizational and cross-regional barriers. The group will continue to accumulate knowledge and momentum so that it can stand on the shoulders of giants, see further and do better in the future, and strive to become the leading brand in the healthcare industry in the Asia-Pacific region.