Chi Mei Foundation Hospital, formerly named Father Fox Memorial Hospital back in the hospital’s early years, was founded in January 14, 1968. The founder - Mr. Li Sing-Ya at that time viewed a serious shortage of medical resources in Tainan area. He invited 38 enthusiastic members of the society and the medical community for donations. Initial set-up of the hospital included 66 hospital beds, 2 operating rooms and 6 departments namely internal medicine, surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, dentistry and ENT. In the 60's, Father Fox Memorial Hospital purchased a computed tomography and ultrasound as the latest equipment at that time, which was second to none. Initially, the hospital was located in No. 138, Wude St. Tainan city with a lot area covering over 991.71 square meters (300 pings).
The department of surgery was led by superintendent Li Sing-Ya together with attending physicians JHENG KANG-HE and LIN LI-WUN . The hospital size was small at that time, but it was renowned for fully-equipped facility and good management in the southern Taiwan. The hospital held regular weekly hospital-wide academic discussion in surgery; the scope included general surgery, orthopedics, neurosurgery, urology and pediatric surgery. For special cases, we then requested specialists from Taipei Veterans General Hospital and Tri-Service General Hospital, such as Dr. JHENG BU-FEI, Dr. ZOU CHUAN-KAI and Dr. JHOU LIANG-CI to guide our physicians for continuous upgrading medical standards in our booming business. Through years of recognition, available bed often became hard to find. The hospital expanded its patient's service in 1979, 1982 and 1984 respectively by extending and converting a catholic church into a 140 hospital beds at Wude St. and Nanning St.. In October 1983, the hospital's business was getting more stable. On the other hand, Superintendent Li Sing-Ya worked in the backstage with the post as founder, but continued to supervise the hospital business and appointed Dr. JHANG,WEI-JHEN to the position of superintendent and then continued to add new equipment for business expansion. However, as the number of patients surge, talented physicians was remarkably in shortage. Fortunately, we are joined by physicians LIANG ON-YICK, CHIANG HSIU-SHAN, KUO CHEN-YI, WANG, KO-CHIH and CHEN YI in the department of surgery and surgical operations proceed smoothly. But for future development plans, the majority of the revenues are prepared for the purpose of future hospital expansion. Although the colleagues has limited income, they remain to double their efforts in achieving a common goal.
In 1983, in order to expand its services in the Chiayi-Tainan area, a land with more than 16,528.5 square meters (5,000 pings) at the present site in Yongkang was purchased with a bank loans at Hua Nan bank. In June 29, 1984, the medical building was under construction. During that time, chairman CHEN JI-CHU, founder Li Sing-Ya and superintendent JHANG,WEI-JHEN with their leadership and unremittingly dedication together with the colleagues worked hard in serving the patients.
The first phase of the project was completed in February 1986 with 290 hospital beds, 9 operating rooms, 19 beds for SICU and 6 beds in recovery room. Then, on March 25 started the official grand opening. All kinds of medical equipments arrived at the hospital. Unfortunately, as the hospital began to take shape, founder Li Sing-Ya passed away due to overwork on December 2, 1986. All the colleagues in the hospital was devastated with grief over his death. Nevertheless, the colleagues still uphold founder Li's unfulfilled wish and continue serving the patients as the objective. Later, we subsequently recruited the elite specialist such as YANG HONG-SING to join the surgical field by putting the right man to the right place, and thus providing great benefits to the patient. The surgical department was divided into eight sections including general surgery, neurosurgery, orthopedics, plastic surgery, urology, thoracic surgery, cardiovascular surgery and pediatric surgery. All specialized physician in each section is in charge of diagnosis and treatment. In order to promote education and training of attending and resident physicians in the surgical department, the department of surgery organized teaching programs such as 1) monthly death case discussion, 2) once a week regular special reports or case conference, 3) regular weekly case discussion or reports held by each subspecialty sections and 4) invite domestic and foreign academic experts or scholars to give lectures every Friday to upgrade the medical standard. Furthermore, the department of surgery also spared no effort for introduction of advanced technology research and development, such as stereotactic brain surgery in neurosurgery, laparoscopic cholecystectomy in general surgery, retroperitoneal laparoscopic nephropexy & extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy in urology and Ruby laser for black pigmentation treatment in plastic surgery, which all gained achievements. Even in May 2012, our hospital introduce the first da Vinci robotic surgery system in the southern Taiwan, and assign a number of attending physician to train abroad in providing more advanced, safe and minimally invasive surgery.
For enhance quality hospital care, in addition to spend on updated hardware equipment, in terms of software, we assign specialists in each department to learn from medical center both at home and abroad, such as 1) Dr. CHIANG HSIU-SHAN pursuit further study at Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Department of Urology in 1984; 2) LIANG ON-YICK and WANG, KO-CHIH were sent to Chicago, Illinois, USA for advanced research studies on gastroenterology and thyroid in 1985; 3) CHEN,YI engage in advanced studies at the Veterans General Hospital, Department of general surgery in 1990; 4) FONG,YAO pursuit further study at Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Department of Thoracic Surgery in July 1993 and 5) SU, JYUN-REN pursuit training on stereotactic brain neurosurgery technique at Cologne, Germany in May 1994. The hospital also give all kinds of appropriate incentives to encourage physician's interest in the research development and writing papers, where domestic and foreign medical journals or related Medical Association published the report.