IHH Healthcare group chief operating officer Joe Sim Heng Joo
KUALA LUMPUR: Integrated healthcare provider IHH Healthcare Bhd
is driving positive change across its key pillars of Patients, People, Public and Planet, by leveraging its international presence, strong partnerships and resources, with time-bound, measurable targets for each pillar.
In its inaugural standalone Sustainability Report, IHH said this includes taking a lead in driving transparency and patient-centric initiatives for the healthcare sector such as value-driven outcomes (VDO) to facilitate better medical recommendations and treatments while optimising costs.
Other than that, IHH said it would enhance the Antimicrobial Stewardship Programme to promote and educate responsible use of antimicrobials (including antibiotics) to reduce antimicrobial resistance (AMR), leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to provide more cost transparency and reducing disease burden through collaborative partnerships to alleviate public healthcare pressures and demands.
"Moving forward, IHH will embrace the many opportunities and take on the challenges as it sharpens and deepens its sustainability focus across all four pillars,” IHH said in a statement today.
To empower its patients, IHH said it will among others expand the scope of VDO programmes to include more procedures and treatments, establish baseline data and progressively implement improvements across all IHH hospitals, to achieve one-hour admission from doctors’ instructions at accident and emergency (A&E) by 2025 and launch AI bill estimator progressively in other markets and develop an AI package builder to build more accurate surgery packages.
For the people pillar, the healthcare provider said it will build on all four facets of its Belonging, Equity, Acceptance and Diversity guideline launched in 2022, including reviewing all HR policies and processes to minimise bias, roll out total well-being framework across its network to support employees and prevent burnout and work towards ISO45001 certification as aligned with internationally recognised occupational health and safety management system standards.
In nurturing a healthier society, IHH said it will enhance the Antimicrobial Stewardship Programme to equip all its hospitals to implement interventions to prevent AMR, in line with Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, World Health Organisation and national guidelines.
"Part of this effort includes developing AMR education programmes that target healthcare workers and the public, extend the flagship Life Renewed programme aimed at broadening quality healthcare access to underserved communities to other key markets, starting with Singapore in 2023,” it added.
The healthcare provider also would continue its efforts to cap carbon emissions at the 2022 baseline while growing the business, start strategising for baseline Scope 3 emissions across its value chain in 2023, as aligned to target to be Science Based Targets initiative-ready by 2025 and to establish science-based pathway to Net-Zero by 2050.
"The aim also to reduce single-use virgin plastic by 90 per cent in non-clinical areas in Malaysia and Singapore in 2023 and scale this commitment to other markets globally,” IHH said.
According to the IHH group chief operating officer Joe Sim, after undertaking baselining in 2022 as part of IHH’s very first standalone sustainability report, the company will work hard to further integrate sustainability into its business and operations.
"We remain focused on providing excellent patient care and outcomes while simultaneously serving the
healthcare needs of our communities and conserving our only home - our planet.
"I am proud of how much we have achieved over the past year and I am confident we will amplify our efforts to make an even bigger difference in the years to come,” he said. - Bernama
