PUTRAJAYA, Sept 29 — Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad wants the national healthcare transformation agenda, including modernising the system and improving patient service delivery, to be completed within the 15th parliamentary term.
He said the Ministry of Health (MOH) faces a major challenge of not only keeping facilities ready but also ensuring healthcare delivery consistently meets the people’s needs.
The focus, he said, includes streamlining existing systems and improving healthcare delivery, with patient experience and journey among the key considerations in executing the ministry’s initiatives.
“Faced with various challenges in healthcare services and the service system, I am certainly among the ministers dealing with a plethora of problems. Our ministry is, by nature, first, facility-based, and second, service-based.
“As such, the challenge for me, my ministry, MOH secretary-general Datuk Seri Hasnol Zam Zam Ahmad, and Health director-general, Datuk Dr Mahathar Abd Wahab, is to ensure that in this 15th Parliament, I fulfil my ambition of building a modern healthcare system and delivery.
“Whatever the method, platform or initiative, I will deliver it as soon as possible,” he said at the launch of the Financing for the Medicine-by-Post Initiative (UMP) today.
Also present were Communications Minister Datuk Seri Fahmi Fadzil, his deputy Teo Nie Ching, and Ministry of Communications secretary-general, Datuk Abdul Halim Hamzah.
Dzulkefly said MOH faces increasingly complex challenges, including food safety and quality, mental health and planetary health.
To strengthen healthcare transformation, he said, the Ministry is also focusing on digitalisation and interoperability across health systems and facilities, including electronic medical records that let public and private facilities share data.
Dzulkefly added that MOH wants healthcare delivery closer to the community and less dependent on hospitals or health facilities for matters that can be handled through alternatives.
He cited UMP as an example that allows patients to obtain follow-up medication without visiting a health facility solely to collect medicine.
“This is the patient experience. We want better treatment and, ultimately, less congestion at hospitals,” he said.
Dzulkefly said efforts to improve follow-up medicine delivery are nothing new, with pharmacy initiatives rolled out in phases over the past decade.
These include Drive-Through Pharmacy, Locker4U and the Local Follow-Up Medicine Supply Centre, as well as UMP and the MyUbat app, to ease the management of follow-up supplies and save patients time and money.
“Healthcare services must not only be available but easily accessible to all Malaysians. That is why we want to deliver on this. That is the mission of the year,” he said. — Bernama
