Private hospitals move towards specialised disciplines to meet demand

Saturday March 14, 2009
Private hospitals move towards specialised disciplines to meet demand
By ELAINE ANG


TWENTY years ago, Sally Teh’s mother used to take her to a general practitioner (GP) in a clinic near her house when she was ill – be it for her asthma or a simple sore throat. Today, Teh takes her two-year-old daughter to a paediatrician at a private hospital every time the child falls sick.

“There are so many diseases nowadays and taking her to a paediatrician makes me feel secure as he would have more in-depth knowledge of children’s ailments,” she says.

TMC Life Sciences Bhd managing director Datuk Dr Colin Lee believes Malaysians are sophisticated enough in their demand for quality healthcare that they have reached a stage where they want to go for “super speciality”.

Citing an example, Lee says parents now prefer to take their children to see a paediatrician and even a paediatric sub-specialist such as one who specialises in respiratory ailments or developmental problems for any illness.

KPJ Healthcare Bhd senior group general manager Amiruddin Satar concurs. He notes that the demand for sub-specialities where doctors are more focused and have in-depth knowledge on a certain discipline is increasing.

“As more research and development and techniques are developed, we also see more doctors specialising on certain parts of the body. For example, doctors can sub-specialise in spinal disorders under the orthopedic discipline,” he says.

For KPJ, it is a natural progression to move towards setting up “centres of excellence” – highly specialised centres focused on certain medical disciplines with breakthrough medical technologies and procedures – to differentiate itself from other hospital groups.

“It is a way to move forward. We hope to have centres of excellence in eye, dental, orthopedic and outpatient disciplines in future,” says Amiruddin.

KPJ which has a cancer centre and an obesity centre in Damansara Specialist Centre is currently moulding them into centres of excellence.

Amiruddin says the group aims to expand its cancer centre and will be investing some RM15mil this year to renovate its cancer outpatient department and add more radiotherapy machines.

KPJ’s obesity centre, the only one in the country, has specialists who perform a unique bypass surgery to make a patient’s stomach smaller.

“This is a sub-specialty and we have a US surgeon who visits every quarter to supervise the procedure. We hope to capture the overseas market, especially the Asean region. So far, we have had about 15 patients, of which two or three are from overseas,” he says.

Nevertheless, Amiruddin admits that having centres of excellence may be easier said than done for most hospitals.

“There must be the demand for a certain sub-speciality for hospitals to supply the specialised treatments. We can equip ourselves to do unique procedures but it will defeat the purpose if the numbers are not there.

“In addition, the centres may have the expertise to do new procedures but they cost a lot. The question is whether patients can afford them,” he says.

To Amiruddin, the best example of a centre of excellence is the National Heart Institute (IJN). “The IJN model has worked very well but I believe centres of excellence of most hospitals would be smaller and attached to their respective hospitals,” he says.

This will enable the centres to save costs by tapping on the hospitals’ facilities. In addition, some centres may not be big enough to have their own laboratory and pharmacy due to a shortage of doctors, especially in such highly specialised areas.

“This is a major challenge for the industry as there are insufficient doctors with the necessary skills to have a full-fledged centre of excellence the likes of IJN,” he says.

He sees a need for more centres of excellence specialising in cancer, orthopedics, heart and fertility in the country.

TMC, which recently established a new hospital, Tropicana Medical Centre, in Kota Damansara, aims to beef up its portfolio of doctors to include specialists with sub-specialities to meet the change in demand.

Says Lee, “We want to position ourselves as a niche market hospital focusing on a few areas. Our centres of excellence will be focused on fertility, children, interventional radiology (using radiology for treatment and reducing invasive surgery) and stem cell collection, which involves cord blood and adult stem cell collection and stem cell therapy.”

Other centres of excellence TMC plans to develop further will cover fields such as endocrinology and diabetes as well as certain areas of orthopedics, especially in relation to stem cell therapy (regeneration of cartilage in joints).

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