KUALA LUMPUR (Sept 13): Establishing a value-based private healthcare system complete with health financing, apart from transforming public healthcare delivery, are among the reforms that Malaysia wishes to undertake in creating a value-based healthcare ecosystem in the country.      

Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad said while the Government’s responsibility is to ensure access to affordable high quality care for citizens, it is, of course, very desirable to have a dynamic private healthcare services sector too.

"The dynamic private healthcare services sector surely is best achieved when both public and private sectors work in tandem and not in isolation,” he said in his speech during the plenary session held in conjunction with the 2019 Hospital Management Conference at the National Convention Centre in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Wednesday (Sept 11).

A copy of his speech text was made available to the media here today.

“I would really want to see some concrete private sector regulatory reforms in the light of nurturing a value-based private healthcare.

“A joint regulatory review would certainly be in order and all reforms would be facilitated by health professionals, health provides of both hospitals and clinics, financing institutions, health insurance, managed care organisations and Takaful,” he said.

The purpose of the private sector reforms is to introduce global mass practices, particularly value-based healthcare and into the stewardship of the private health sector, and to lay down regulatory groundwork for establishing and enabling an environment for both public and private sectors.

Sharing his points as one of the panellists at the conference, Dr Dzulkefly said the end result of the holistic review was to strengthen the alignment and harmonisation of regulations and also to identify and address gaps and weaknesses in both regulatory instruments, the capacity of regulators and to mitigate real or even perceived conflict of interest.