The Ministry of Health and Welfare began promoting the “Hospitalist Medicine Ward” program in 2015 to improve patient flow and reduce crowding in the Emergency Department. The Internal Medicine Department authorized and executed the program. The “Hospitalist Medicine Ward” started with 36 medical beds for acute hospitalization and expanded to 50 medical beds in 2020. In October 2022, the “Hospitalist Medicine Ward” was renamed “Holistic and Multidisciplinary Medicine” as an official unit under the Internal Medicine Department.

      Since 2015, we have hospitalized over 9,500 patients with a 95 % of medical bed occupancy. The mean duration of hospitalization was approximately 10 days. Since the implementation of our program, the retention rate at the Emergency Department was significantly decreased to less than 1 %. Our unit’s features are based on integrative medicine care with multiple subspecialties of physicians on our medical team. Regarding inpatient hospitalization, primary care attending physicians rotate 24 hours per day providing medical care. The rotational shifts allowed appropriate working hours for all medical staff. Regarding outpatient clinics, patients are allowed to switch between subspecialty attending physicians within a single unit without a referral. The features of integrative medicine in our unit offer a unified medical experience for patients with multiple comorbidities. Holistic and Multidisciplinary Medicine provided the efficiency of the patient’s overall healthcare and prevented the waste of medical resources.