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進入《TAIPEI TIMES》 Hospital questioned over staffing practice
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lin Ching-yi, right, holds a news conference in Taipei yesterday to highlight alleged staffing irregularities at Asia University Hospital. Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
By Chen Wei-han / Staff reporter
Asia University Hospital （AUH） has exploited a loophole in medical employment laws to fill a shortage of nurses at the hospital by using personnel at a nearby hospital, with nurses seconded to AUH potentially being overworked, a lawmaker said yesterday.
AUH, which opened its doors in Taichung’s Wufong District （霧峰） in August last year, has made requests for temporary staffing support from China Medical University Hospital （CMUH） in the city’s North District on a regular basis, with the CMUH staff asked to perform more than 1,000 work shifts at AUH every month, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lin Ching-yi （林靜儀） told a press conference.
There are 60 nurses registered under AUH, but it could not explain the working arrangement and timetable of those employees, suggesting they are the staff of other medical facilities who have been asked to perform services at AUH on a regular basis, Lin said.
The short-term transfer of medical staff is a legal provision to ensure flexibility in regional medical staffing, but AUH’s abuse of the system could lead to the deterioration of already strenuous medical working conditions, Lin said.
“The abuse might lead to the atypical employment of nursing staff in the future, which would be detrimental to the development of medical staff’s working conditions,” Lin said.
Hospital employees have to comply with the short-term transfer policy “although they might not be familiar with the computer systems or the medical departments” at AUH, thereby compromising their rights and care quality, Lin said.
The two hospitals and school systems have worked in close collaboration, as CMUH chairman Tsai Chang-hai （蔡長海） cofounded Asia University in 1998 and is also the chairman of Asia University.
The Taichung Health Bureau said the practice of short-term staff transfer is “legal,” but “unreasonable.”
A CMUH nurse had worked a 146-day stint at AUH from January to last month, which was beyond reasonable practice, the bureau’s Medical Administration Department director Hung Mei-chih （洪美智） said.
During AUH’s initial operations, CMUH physicians and surgeons were temporarily seconded to AUH to run the understaffed hospital, Hung added.
Since short-term transfers are legally permissible and there is no law regulating the practice, the bureau had to approve all of AUH’s transfer requests, Hung said.
On average, the monthly number of short-term transfer requests would peak at 200 to 300 for a hospital, but the frequency of requests made by AUH is well above that, with a transferred nurse likely to work a stint of 20 to 30 days at AUH every month, which may be deemed an unfair labor practice, Ministry of Health and Welfare senior specialist Chen Ching-mei （陳青梅） said.
Only part of the regular AUH staff had been overworked and the supporting staff from CMUH was not, the Taichung Labor Affairs Bureau said, but Lin said the working timetables presented by AUH might not reflect the real working hours.
The lawmaker called on the ministry and the Taichung City Government to conduct more frequent labor inspections at the two hospitals to protect the rights of workers.
新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES
