MAINTENANCE COST ANALYSIS FOR LARGE HOSPITAL BUILDINGS

Large hospitals such as medical centers provide not only medical services, but also carry the responsibilities for emergency refuges, medical researches and education. The function of large hospitals is as important as other infrastructure systems such as highways, bridges, and utilities. When disasters occur, the hospitals have to provide emergency medical services for victims and support the patient's needs of health. In order to keep a smooth operation of hospitals, the maintenance management of hospital buildings should be carefully investigated. However, there are few researches focused on maintenance management issues of hospital buildings. This paper investigated the National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH) and established a maintenance cost database. The NTUH is the best-known and most high-renowned medical center in Taiwan in which more than 4,000 employees serving approximately 2,000 in-patients and 7,000 out-patients daily. The data were collected from the NTUH which consisted of 16,228 maintenance records in the past ten years. This paper analyzed these data to obtain various characteristics of maintenance records, and revealed the key items of maintenance cost for large hospital buildings, which can provide the facility manager of hospital buildings to execute a proper maintenance policy for hospital buildings.