On 23rd of November 2017, a forum discussion was held in our Matahari Education Centre. The main trigger of this event was to bridge the major insurance providers in the country with targeted private hospitals and provide them with a platform to discuss the implementation of Early Warning Scoring system (EWS) in Malaysia.
EWS is a system to detect patient deterioration created by the Royal College of Physicians UK. In the general ward setting, patients deteriorate undetected and by the time medical help is alerted, time left to save patients’ lives are minimal. Based on patients’ vital signs, this scoring system will give patients scores and if the score is high, measures like more frequent observations and alerting the consultant, etc will be taken to prevent further deterioration of the condition. Albeit being a proven beneficial system, EWS is an IT solution and the cost of implementation is significant. This has led hospitals to raise concern whether insurance providers will agree with this system implemented in hospitals panels.
Customers who attended the session were Bagan Specialist Centre, Sunway Medical Centre and Penang Adventist Hospital. Whereas from the insurance providers, we have representatives from the giants of Malaysian Healthcare Insurance Great Eastern Life Assurance (Malaysia) Berhad and AIA Health Systems Sdn Bhd. We were also honored to have with us one of the major insurance Third Party Administrator (TPA) in Malaysia, Asia Assistance Network (M) Sdn Bhd. The session was moderated by En. Anwar Anis, a reputed leader in the private hospital community who has previously served as Chief Executive Officer in Pantai Hospital Kuala Lumpur and now, with a private healthcare investment and operations platform organization.
The event started off with a brief introduction of idsMED by our Division Director of Marketing – Joey Lee, who explained the role of idsMED within the healthcare ecosystem. Joey mentioned that hosting sessions to create awareness of new solutions or to share information with customers is a regular activity carried out by idsMED and it is our goal to expand customer’s clinical knowledge & the latest technology in medical industry. Next, Laetitia Franquin, General Care Sales Solution Specialist from Philips Healthcare gave an introduction to EWS and showed some successful implementations around the world. Dr Tan Hui Ling, CEO of Bagan Specialist Hospital then shared Bagan Specialist Centre’s experience in implementing manual EWS. Even with only manual EWS, they have managed to reduce 45% of In hospital cardiac arrest cases in 6 months.
From then on, the discussion started where Dr Viroshini from AIA commented that if the system has proven clinical benefits, insurance providers will back it up wholeheartedly. From the IT point of view, Dr Elni from Pantai Parkway Ltd, Malaysia operations division IT Team also shared that from her past experiences, EWS has shown significant prevention of patient deterioration. Also, medical IT is the new trend in Malaysia and it is ‘..the way to go now in Malaysia.’ Along the discussion, Chief Nursing Officer of Sunway Medical Centre Ms Chan Lai Hong has also shared her success story whereby ever since EWS was used to triage patients before dialysis, they have successfully stopped codes in Nephrology Hemodialysis unit.
Overall, this event was successful as all participants agreed that it was a healthy and positive information sharing session. With this, we would ultimately target for the level of healthcare in Malaysia to raise a level higher and with that, patients will receive better medical care.
©idsMED 2017
