Malaysia Healthcare Government Plan
On 15 June 2023, the Malaysia Parliament passed the Health White Paper (HWP) prepared by the Ministry of Health (MOH), which aims to reform Malaysia’s health systems towards supporting the health and well-being for Malaysians over the next 15 years. The policy paper sets out a structural reformation plan to respond to Malaysia’s health challenges and to ensure greater equitability, sustainability, and resilience of the health system.
The HWP proposed the following aspirations for the nation’s health system:
- A shift from ‘sick care’ to preventive and promotional services,
- An equitable, accessible, and person-centered health system,
- A health system able to anticipate, adapt and respond to demands from NCDs and rapid health emergencies such as infectious disease outbreaks, pandemics, and climate events,
- An open and innovative health ecosystem,
- A health system valued by the people.
The four key pillars of the health system reform in the HWP are highlighted below:
Pillar 1: Transforming Healthcare Service Delivery by increasing effective public-private partnerships, implementing MOH ICT Masterplan such as phased roll-out of Electronic Medical Record and Electronic Lifetime Health Record (ELHR), and Health Information Exchange (HIE).
Pillar 2: Advancing Health Promotion and Disease Prevention by moving away from treating ill people to a new paradigm of ensuring people stay healthy and applying incentives and disincentives to help acculture healthy behaviors and norms among the populations.
Pillar 3: Ensuring the Population Receives Comprehensive Services That Are Affordable by revising the current fee structure in public healthcare facilities with payments to the commensurate ability to pay and developing a benefits package that could be accessed by the populations in both public and private sectors at affordable fees.
Pillar 4: Strengthening the Health Service’s Foundation and Governance by restructuring MOH’s role and developing a national research strategy to guide and support research and innovation activities that provide evidence-based for policy-and decision-making during the implementation of the health reform and beyond.
If you represent a U.S. company with relevant technology and expertise in preventive care, innovation, and digitalization that can aid Malaysia’s healthcare transformation, please contact Commercial Specialist Bethany Tien at office.kualalumpur@trade.gov.