Welcoming 2019: Aiming to be Better, Faster and Friendlier (BFF)

The new governance structure for the Kuala Lumpur campus of UKM was approved by the UKM Board of Directors in November 2017 and with it came the appointment of the first Pro Vice Chancellor of KKL. At the same time the positions of the dean for the Faculty of Medicine and the director for the Hospital Canselor Tuanku Muhriz (HCTM) were given to separate leaders (previously one person was the dean and the director). It was a very challenging first 6 months of 2018 as they were plenty of changes and adjustments to be made. The second 6 months were more stable and the newly appointed team at the KKL were then able to plan and execute new changes more smoothly with respect to the administration hence reducing the bureaucratic processes and making it more efficient. The impact of the new governance structure has been positive and the Board of Directors of UKM has given the endorsement at it last meeting in December 2018.

The new chairman of BOD of UKM, Tan Sri Abdul Wahid Omar, has already started his visits to the faculties and institutes to have a first-hand look at the achievements and planning from each of them. Our new Vice Chancellor, Professor Ir. Dr. Mohd Hamdi Abd Shukor will also come into office on the 2nd January 2019. There will certainly be changes made by the new leadership team and we are confident that UKM will get even better, fitter and stronger. We at the KL campus certainly look forward to the new leadership of UKM.

As the saying goes ‘if we fail to plan, we plan to fail’, hence here are some of the key strategic initiatives planned for KKL in the year 2019.

1. Human resource

For human resource management, it looks like human resource development (HRD) and talent management will be the key focus areas. The HRD will need to focus on efforts to improve talent scouting, recruitment processes, training needs, staff development and retaining talent. There will be increased allocation available for training and to impact on a larger group of staff members (despite the overall budget cut), more in-house training will be done by trainers and coaches both within and outside of UKM. Leadership and management training programme for leaders at all levels will be enhanced. In fact the first discussion with the Graduate School of Business UKM was held recently to offer a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) with specialization in Healthcare Leadership and Management. Hopefully future leaders will be more equipped with the right knowledge and skills to lead the institutions in KKL.

We should aim for a leaner human resource especially when the allocation for contract staff under the financial vote V29000 for 2019 has also been reduced. UKM has had to let go many of our top academic staff as it cannot afford to offer contract positions to the outstanding professors. The Ministry of Education is also addressing this issue of brain drain from retirement of our top academicians from the universities.

2. ICT

The big plan is towards the realisation of a smart campus at both the Cheras and Jalan Raja Muda locations. For the HCTM, we are planning to go paper-less by 2020 with the launching of an integrated Total Hospital Information System which will include the module for Electronic Medical Record (EMR). There is a choice of using the EMR which is currently being developed by our Pusat Teknologi Maklumat KKL or to use available software in the market. There are other ICT-related issues to be address campus-wide and to this end, a steering committee will be formed with representatives from all the faculties and research institutes. Sub-committees will also be formed to address software and hardware components, big data and the needs for the data centre to cater for the whole of KL campus. We hope to map clearly the Big Data initiative for KKL in 2019. Work has started for this a few years ago but there is a need to increase the momentum and to consolidate our efforts.

3. Finance

The biggest challenge in 2019 is coping with the budget cut for the HCTM and ensuring that services and health care will be given to patients at the best level possible despite the cut. The phrase ‘doing more with less’ doesn’t usually work in healthcare with the increasing cost of drugs and other consumables. Financial sustainability will be the main aim. This won’t be easy as we have to generate income as much as possible to cover for the deficit in budget. To put things into perspective, even for 2018, allocation for drugs started with only RM30 million but as we entered the final month of 2018, more than RM20 million has been added to the budget from the reserve account. We should also strategise and plan on how to turn many of the cost centres into profit centres, or at least make the respective service units break-even. This is easier said than done as about 75% of our patients come with the government guarantee letter (GL) hence will be treated free of charge. Even escalating our efforts for 2018, we will still not able to cover for the deficit in budget.

For those heading the clinical units, we should be aware that it will be a big challenge to cope with the increase in the number of outpatients and inpatients (estimated to be about 5% increase in number of patients in 2019). The focus will be to increase the number of paying patients so that the income generated can be used to cover for the increase in cost for those extra number of patients coming with the GL. We hope the new government will increase the budget allocation for the teaching hospitals.

The team responsible for coordination of income generation activities are working hard to maximize the returns and the KKL management will increase its efforts as well as bringing in more sponsorships, donations, gifts and endowments.

4. Infrastructure

The majority of the infrastructure at the Cheras campus are more than 20 years old (it started operations in 1997). There are new buildings like the Pre-Clinical Building and UMBI. Overall at the HCTM, there are many systems, components, equipment (not including the medical equipment) and fittings that need to be changed. The lifts frequently break down and need to be replaced but the budget available has allowed us to only make repairs for the lifts in Core A. The chilled water system also needs to be changed as the old system is causing the air-conditioning to function at an inefficient manner and certainly not energy-saving. The electrical and plumbing systems are also already old and needs to be replaced or ungraded.

Prasarana KKL submitted to the ministry this year (2018) a total budget request of RM190 million in development expenses to upgrade the infrastructure. Fortunately, we were given the approval for RM41 million with the first allocation of RM10 million in the 2019 budget announcement for upgrading the electrical system at the HCTM.

The Jalan Raja Muda campus is more than 30 years old and it too is suffering from regular leaking, faults in air-conditioning systems plus many wear and tear issues. Again the new management managed to secure a funding of RM700,000 for some upgrading works at the Faculty of Dentistry, Faculty of Health Sciences and Faculty of Pharmacy. This is just a small scale repair job as there are many aspects of the campus which needs to be upgraded. The KKL management will increase its efforts in securing more budget to upgrade the infrastructure including preparing to submit for a big renovation budget under the 12th Malaysia Plan.

We have also embark on strategies and plan of action to save energy and to make the campus green and sustainable.

5. Services

The director of HCTM and his management team have been working extremely hard since coming into office to improve clinical services. The four deputy directors have provided the leadership for the various clinical and allied health departments plus also the administrative services. The slogan ‘Better, Faster and Friendlier’ resonates well at various levels of services but the proof of the pudding will be in terms of our customer satisfaction and also clinical outcome.

The processes to help those patients in the B40 group and those who need help with their hospital bills have been improved and made more patient friendly. We hope we can garner more donations into our Tabung Kebajikan Pesakit to allow us to help more needy patients. On the other hand for those who are able to pay either out of their own pocket or those with health insurance, we hoped to be able to make the processes of cost recovery even tighter with minimum leakage.

The Lean and Six Sigma approaches have been brought in to improve wait time and efficiency for selected clinical areas including the emergency department, the clinics and the wards. The case mix data churned out by our own Case Mix Centre will be utilised in a more comprehensive manner for budget planning and to monitor efficiency and performance of our clinical services.

6. Community outreach

All the faculties and institutes in KKL have done a lot to reach out to the communities either within KL or even reaching out to the various states including the rural areas. The surge in prevalence of non-communicable diseases is alarming and we hope we could together escalate our preventive efforts including activities of health education and health promotion. Finding solutions that work and which are cost-effective are amongst the biggest challenges. Most that come for health screening are the motivated ones and usually with the least risk among the population. The still relatively cheap cost of universal healthcare (RM1 will allow most of us access to healthcare at the government hospitals) have put our nation on top of the league of those with the best healthcare system in the world, however, the drawback or the negative impact is the lesser motivation to take care of our health. We need better strategies to improve awareness on the need for healthy lifestyle at the community level. The 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) is already coming and perhaps we should utilise technologies and big data analytics to come up with better strategies and monitor the health of our population at the community level. We have the expertise at UKM and we should in 2019 plan for this in a big manner.

Insha Allah, we hope to plan and execute the strategies and initiatives successfully. Happy New Year to everyone!