KUALA LUMPUR: Deputy Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Hilmi Yahaya said the infrastructure and culture of health care needs to be re-engineered to deliver better services to the people.
Dr Hilmi said Malaysia's health system was constantly facing serious challenges and health care was becoming increasingly complex due to changing disease patterns and reform initiatives.
“New and challenging questions arised need to be answered by policy makers with greater depth and detail. They have to be well managed for us to achieve our national goals.
“We are much in the era of evidence-based healthcare and implementing research findings is an important way of bringing changes to the current health care system.
“Government is aware of the importance of research and its potential in solving health issues. As such, the government has provided support for health research by making it a national agenda,” he said before opening the 17th National Institute of Health (NIH) Seminar 2014 in conjunction with NIH Research Week here today.
Citing a report published by Institute of Medicine in 2012 that revealed US health care system wasted 30 per cent or USD750 billion in unnecessary health spending as example, he said Malaysia’s facing similar situation now.
“Audits showed that there are hospitals conducted unnecessary tests on patients which had resulted in wastage that need to be reduced.
“Hence, a health care system that is inefficient and slow must be reconfigured,” he said.
He added the report also made several recommendations to improve health care delivery, including enhancing care coordination between and across organisations and to continuously improving health care operations to reduce waste and streamline care delivery.