KPJ Healthcare Berhad - Annual Report 2018

64 KPJ HEALTHCARE BERHAD PRESIDENT & MANAGING DIRECTOR’S REVIEW LEVERAGING ON DIGITALISATION TO DRIVE EFFICIENCIES Like any other business entity, private hospitals need to focus on efficiencies, especially within the area of customer service. Since 2016, we have been utilising an online appointment and queue system for the convenience of patients. This online system allows for patients to make hospital appointments by going to individual hospital websites, and reserving dates and times which are convenient for them, as well as enabling them to change their appointment dates if they need to. As at end 2018, a total of 16 KPJ Hospitals are utilising this system. Within the area of cybersecurity, we enhanced our IT infrastructure to better manage our IT services and safeguard our data security as well as the data privacy of our patients. In particular, we brought a second data centre online, thus ensuring we now have two data centres up and running at two separate locations, with both conducting real time backups. This is of critical importance for our smooth operations in the event of any potential disasters, as we will have up to date business critical information required to ensure that there are not any unnecessary time delays or information gaps. CONTINUOUS BUSINESS PROCESS IMPROVEMENT Towards ensuring continuous business process improvements, KPJ focused on the dynamics of setting up a centralised Business Support Service covering marketing, finance and human resource aspects in all our hospitals for the year ahead. We embarked on a Group-wide study to identify how we could centralise this function, and have prioritised functions and tasks related to payroll, financial and banking services. By centralising these functions, we can ensure that it is not duplicated, and thus reduce the administrative load of our staff on the ground and free up their time to focus their attention on our patients. This will have a transformative effect on the Group, both in terms of cost efficiency, as well as changing the function and role of our people in hospitals, in alignment with our journey towards a person centred healthcare model. OUTLOOK As we move into the year ahead, we expect the Malaysian economy to continue to grow at a slow pace of 4.9%, while inflation is projected to increase from between 1.5% and 2.5% in 2018 to between 2.5% and 3.5% in 2019. The slower pace of growth, coupled with rising inflation may have an impact on both corporations provision of medical insurance for their employees, as well as consumers accessing private healthcare services, which cost more than public healthcare services.