IN the wake of the Middle East crisis and its potential to further drive up medical costs, the question for me, as a practising physician, is no longer whether the public and private healthcare sectors should collaborate, but how we can do so in a way that is truly meaningful for patients in this environment.
We have taken an important step forward with the establishment of the Joint Ministerial Committee for Private Healthcare Costs (JMCPHC). Led by the Health and the Finance ministries, the committee brings together private hospitals, insurers, and academia to collaboratively address the challenge of medical inflation.
In addition, initiatives such as the Hospital Services Outsourcing Programme enable public healthcare patients to access care in private facilities when needed, helping to ease capacity constraints while maintaining continuity of care.
The Healthcare Partners Protocol & Solutions Committee (HPPSC), established as a joint multistakeholder platform, complements these efforts by addressing common issues related to medical claims and guarantee letter processes, allowing stakeholders to identify root causes of issues, develop practical solutions, and promote greater transparency across the private healthcare financing ecosystem.
While these are strong examples of what structured collaboration can look like in practice, from where I stand, we are only scratching the surface of what is possible.
For many years, Malaysia’s public and private healthcare systems have operated side by side, each doing what it does best. The public sector plays a critical role in ensuring access and equity, but often faces significant financial pressure. The private sector, on the other hand, has had to prioritise efficiency and innovation, while facing the challenge of remaining sustain-able.
The next step is not to blur roles, but to connect them more meaningfully. While the JMCPHC addresses private healthcare costs, the public healthcare system, still the foundation of national care, requires urgent focus and streng-thening, especially given the world’s current political and economic climate.
One of the most practical ways to do this is through meaningful knowledge-sharing between the public and private healthcare sectors – and a key area where this can make an immediate difference is procurement.
In private hospitals, procurement has evolved out of necessity. Without a close eye on procurement, the sustainability of private hospitals would be a challenge. We rely heavily on data, demand forecasting, and close vendor management to keep costs under control while maintaining quality. Far from being merely theoretical ideas, these are operational practices that are tested daily, and refined continuously, and as such, there is real value in sharing these approaches more systematically with the public sector. I believe the public sector can truly benefit from adapting these practices for its own context.
Another area that deserves more attention is what we might call non-clinical value-based outcomes.
As clinicians, we are trained to focus on clinical outcomes, and rightly so. But patients experience healthcare in a much broader way. Waiting time, ease of getting an appointment, clarity of billing, and how well we communicate all shape their overall experience. These factors may not appear in a medical chart, but they matter to patients. For example, reducing waiting times through better scheduling, improving access to preferred doctors, or ensuring patients understand their bills upfront can significantly improve trust and satisfaction.
In private healthcare, we have invested heavily in tracking and improving these metrics, often using real-time dashboards and patient feedback. Done well, the focus on non-clinical value-based outcomes would represent a meaningful investment in improving the everyday experience of patients within our public healthcare system.
There is an opportunity here to share what has worked, adapt it thoughtfully, and scale it where appropriate without losing sight of clinical quality or equitable access for the public sector.
Of course, none of this happens automatically, and trade-offs are inevitable. But we cannot allow that to stall progress indefinitely. At some point, we have to move forward with intent.
I remain optimistic that the first step is establishing a common baseline, where public-private sector knowledge-sharing allows us to identify what works, adopt best practices, and collectively troubleshoot the areas that remain challenging.
The Association of Private Hospitals of Malaysia has expressed strong support for the JMCPHC, and that alignment is encouraging. But as with many good initiatives, the real challenge lies in execution. And this is achievable.
The HPPSC is an example of how this can be translated into practice by bringing stakeholders together to address real, operational challenges and drive meaningful improvements in the healthcare financing ecosystem. Building on the example of HPPSC, for similar efforts to succeed, it is essential that all parties engage from a position of openness, trust, and transparency.
If we are serious about moving forward, three things need to happen.
First, knowledge-sharing must be institutionalised, not left to informal exchanges, but supported through structured platforms, joint working groups, and pilot projects.
Second, incentives need to be aligned. Both public and private stakeholders should be working towards outcomes that benefit the system as a whole.
Third, we must be willing to scale what works. Too often good ideas remain as small pilot projects. We need a pathway to expand successful models quickly and responsibly.
At the end of the day, healthcare reform is often described as a policy issue. From a clinician’s perspective, coordination can address that issue, especially seeing that we do not lack expertise or capability in Malaysia.
I believe the foundation is already in place. The real question is whether we build on it with intent and urgency, or allow it to remain a well-intentioned idea that never quite reaches its full potential.
Datuk Dr Kuljit Singh is president of the Association of Private Hospitals Malaysia. The views expressed here are solely his own.
