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Planning Ahead
October 2009
2009. FutureGov Research. All rights reserved. All information in this report is verified to the best of the authors and the publishers ability. However, FutureGov Research does not accept responsibility for any loss arising from reliance on it. Neither this publication nor any part of it may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of FutureGov Research.
PREFACE
Planning Ahead - Is Asias Healthcare Sector Ready for the Future? is a FutureGov Research whitepaper, sponsored by Fuji Xerox. The views may not necessarily reflect those of the sponsor. This report was researched, written and prepared by the FutureGov team. The principal contributors were James Smith, Jianggan Li, Chris White and Ran Elfassy. The cover was designed by Patrick Schulze. Our sincere thanks go out to all those that contributed their time to the survey and the interviews.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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ABSTRACT EXECUTIVE SUMMARY RESEARCH DEMOGRAPHICS Geographical segmentation Segmentation by Organisational Type Organisational size Organisational by Service Type and Location The role of it in asias healthcare Introduction The Importance of Electronic Record Management (ERM) Insights Looking Ahead Where Strategic Plans Are Taking Healthcare Insights The Role of Outsourcing Who Decides on IT Investments? Insights Deciding Whats Important Prioritising IT in Healthcare CURRENT CHALLENGES BREAKING THROUGH THE IT BARRIER Finding the Paper Trail in an Age of Innovation Insights Making the Jump and Getting Connected Getting Networked Connectivity in Healthcare Insights CONCLUSION
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TABLE OF FIGURES
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Figure 1 - Respondent profiles by staff role (%). Figure 2 - Respondents by location (%). Figure 3 - Respondents by geographic location from private/ public sector healthcare organisations. Figure 4 - Respondents by size of organisation (%). Figure 5 - Healthcare services by geographical location. Figure 6 - Medical insurance coverage in China from 2003 to 2008.
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Figure 7 - Relative importance of ERM for the future (% of respondents by location). Figure 8 - Investment areas over the next 1 to 2 years period by geographical location (% of respondents by location). Figure 9 - Areas of focus for a three-year strategic plan (% of respondents by location). Figure 10 - Organisations outsourcing behaviour (% of respondents by location). Figure 11 - Parties responsible for IT investment (% of respondents by location). Figure 12 - Ranked importance of implementing major IT projects. Figure 13 - Improvement area of interest (% of respondents by location). Figure 14 - Dependence on paper-based processes to manage internal workflow and patient care (% of respondents by location). Figure 15 - Whether or not manual paperwork contributes errors and increases risks to patients (% of respondents by location). Figure 16 - Agreement that organisational dependence on paper-based processes has contributed to errors (% of respondents by location). Figure 17 - Whether or not the organisation implemented, or is it in the process of implementing, Electronic Record Management (% of respondents by location). Figure 18 - Time period legally required to keep patient records, even after being stored digitally (% of respondents by location). Figure 19 - Why multifunction devices have not yet been connected to the network (% of respondents by location).
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Abstract
In this study, responses were sought from public sector IT Executives in The Peoples Republic of China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, The Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, South Korea and Taiwan. Respondents were initially contacted by FutureGov Research via email and telephone in September. They were invited to complete an online questionnaire that was hosted on the FutureGov web site between September and October 2009. In all, 172 responses were received before the study was closed in early October 2009. However, not all questions were answered by all respondents and some were not included. A total of 169 respondents were included in this study. In addition, five hospital executives in the region were contacted after the initial analysis had been completed and asked for their anecdotal comments on some of the survey questions. The responses were spread relatively evenly across the countries, with the greatest number of respondents coming from Singapore (49) and the least coming from Taiwan (6). The survey sought to receive from the respondents their thoughts on the current state and use of IT within their organisations, and the strategic value given to electronic record management (ERM) as they moved into the future. Investigated topics included: What is the importance given to ERM? How advanced are public sector health organisations in the region in scanning and imaging for converting paper forms into digital formats? What role does outsourcing play in Asia Pacifics healthcare sector? What have healthcare organisations adopted within their strategic plans as offices move toward greater automation? In order to improve patient care and workflow, who are the decision makers and which departments are involved in IT initiatives? What are the priorities for deciding how to implement major projects?
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Executive Summary
In Planning Ahead Is Asias Healthcare Sector Ready for the Future?, researchers sought responses from public sector IT Executives in The Peoples Republic of China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, The Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, South Korea and Taiwan. The survey attracted 169 complete responses in total, with representation for respective roles being: 32% from senior management; 53% from middle management; and 15% from patient care staff, department coordinators and administrative staff. Just over one third of respondents were employed by government healthcare organisations located in Singapore, with the remainder being roughly split among the remaining countries. The division of respondents coming from public or private hospital facilities was roughly even, with the remaining 4% coming from other medical facilities and clinics. In terms of organisational size, the majority came from organisations with less than 500 staff, and then organisations that were between 501 and 1000 staff members. The majority of respondents (96%) reported that ERM of patient information over the coming years will be Very Important or Somewhat Important. Hence, both frontline staff and the executive office are taking ERM very seriously. Most respondents agreed on the importance of Quality Management in ERM, especially over data collection and institutional transparency. Where outsourcing of IT processes hasnt been fully adopted, this may bedue to a lack of outsourcing agents; that if there are agents, theyhave had difficulties with integrating into the country system; or, as in the case for Chinas particular context, the survey wasnt able to capture the details of the organisations outsourcing behaviour. In areas like Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, outsourcing activity has been used for in-house printing facilities, printer management, and document scanning. Deciding how to identify and then fill the gaps is a challenge that is especially pressing in the healthcare sector, and IT Departments have generally been given autonomy and responsibility to decide how IT budgets will be spent. The only responses where IT Departments were not the most responsible for IT investments were from Singapore, where roughly equal decision power is shared by the IT Department, Department Heads and the CEO.
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Executive Summary
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On the whole, respondents considered Increased quality of patient service as the most important measure of whether an IT project should or should not be implemented. Respondents were also highly focused on improving Quality of Service. Singaporean and Thai respondents reported that Return on Investment (ROI) was a concern, and this was correlated to responses regarding improved cost savings. Hospitals and other such organisations are still heavily dependent on paper-based processes to manage workflow and patient care. Results showed that risk to patients seemed to increase when patient data were paper based. The study also measured the length of time that departments were required to keep patient records, even after they were stored digitally. The majority of respondents reported that they were legally bound to keep the records from 4 to 10 years. In the final part of the study, participants were asked why they thought multifunction devices were not yet connected to the organisations IT network. The greatest factors hampering connectivity in the healthcare organisation relates back to procurement and technical issues. Much as staff may want new technology and see it as a means to reduce inefficiency and mitigate patient risk, there remains the barrier of getting the hardware and software and ensuring that it actually works on the ground. Respondents from Singapore and Malaysia also identified Lack of centralised vision during purchase cycles as a possible source of organisational inertia.
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CONCLUSIONS
Improved ERM is a critically important area of concern, where new technologies and customised solutions to patient information must be adopted. Outsourcing is one way of quickly adopting and launching solutions, but the need to have these solutions customised to the local context is crucial. There remains much room for improvement when it comes to adopting scanning and imaging technology to convert paper forms into digital formats. Quality Management around data collection, institutional transparency and improved ERM processes was the most important strategic concern for the future. IT Departments play the greatest role in deciding how IT budgets will be spent for local decisions within an organisation, yet for greater implementation it is up to the Department Heads and the Executive Office to set the vision. Increased risks to patients are believed to come from errors associated with workflows and processes that remain dependent on manual inputting across paper-based methods.
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Research Demographics
The survey Planning Ahead Is Asias Healthcare Sector Ready for the Future? attracted a total of 169 complete responses, with their respective roles indicated by Figure 1 below. Those from senior management positions in the public sector amounted to one third of the respondents, and half came from middle management. The remainder came from patient care staff, department coordinators and administrative staff. The breakdown of respondents by geographical location and by organisational size (in terms of staff numbers) is outlined in the following sections.
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CEO, Managing Director, President CFO/Controller, COO or Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) CIO - IT General Manager Vice President of Operation, General Manager (GM) Senior Management - Vice-President IT Manager Middle or Line Manager, Director, Manager, Head of Dept. etc. Patient care staff, dept coordinator, Administration
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Geographical Segmentation
The location of those who responded to the survey is shown in Figure 3 below. As indicated, just over one third of respondents were employed by government healthcare organisations located in Singapore, with the remainder being roughly split among Mainland China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, The Philippines, Thailand, South Korea and Taiwan.
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China Hong Kong Malaysia The Philippines Singapore South Korea Thailand Taiwan
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Organisational Size
Respondents were asked to nominate the size of their organisation, including satellite hospital locations like clinics and offices. They then chose from 7 different options, running the range from less than 100 staff to over 10,000 staff, to the disclosure of uncertainty around staff count. The results from this survey follow in Figure 4 below.
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70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
Specialty Care
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THE ROLE OF IT IN ASIAS HEALTHCARE Introduction
As the worlds largest economy is currently thrown in socio-political turmoil around public healthcare, the US Governments decisions over providing public and/or affordable health coverage for its citizens are bound to have impact on the healthcare sectors in Asia Pacific. An overhaul of how the health insurance and medical sector will cover costs, and the degree to which hospitals will be able to retain staff is expected to dramatically change the medical communities. The carrot and stick approach for care providers to adopt Electronic Medical Records by a certain deadline, as stipulated in the US stimulus legislation, will have its implications felt in the US as well as trickling through to Asia Pacific. Moreover, the massive overhaul of Mainland Chinas healthcare sector, this from what is emerging as the worlds next-largest economy, will only increase the complexity and impact on healthcare delivery around Asia Pacific and beyond. On the one hand, the massive investments spearheaded by Premier Wen Jiabao will likely spur major opportunities throughout Asia Pacific, and on the other hand, these investments may attract medical professionals away from their home countries leading to a dirth of qualifieid professionals in other countries. This may apply to both medical staff as well as health IT specialists required to plan, upgrade and maintain systems. It is generally understood the lack of qualified health IT professionals is a severe problem impeding greater leverage of IT within the care providers across the region. Over the next decade, the countrys much-anticipated reform to fix the ailing medical system is slated to begin, and the task of delivering fair and affordable healthcare to all its 1.3 billion citizens will likely have consequences that will continue for many years to come. Of special note, the divide between the relatively advanced urban healthcare infrastructure, as compared to the very basic healthcare services in rural China, which is often non-existent in certain areas will need to be addressed. Dr Hans Troedsson, the World Health Organizations representative in China, said WHO is pleased to see that the Government of China has made a firm commitment to universal coverage of essential health care. He later added that, however, China has a long way to go in terms of improving equity in financing and provision of essential health care for all.
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90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Population (millions) Coverage Ratio
*Source: 2003-2007 data from the Chinese Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security; 2008 data from the National Statistics Bureau of China.
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After three years of intense debate, The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the Chinese Cabinet issued the Guidelines on Deepening the Reform of Health-care System. The goal was to deliver a basic universal health-care system by 2020. On the roadmap for reaching this goal, a 3-year implementation plan was recently launched. An investment of US$124billion has been secured and healthcare service providers around the world will likely be affected. This impact represents huge opportunities for Chinas rapidly developing healthcare sectors, with massive investments being made in both securing better facilities and qualified staff, but these changes will spark equally massive new challenges, especially around staffing in all the countries surveyed in this study. The challenges likely to unfold will affect how hospitals, service providers and administrative departments use IT to manage the significant waves of patient records that the overhaul will trigger. For IT executives and their staff, these pressures will place even greater expectations by their national programmes to deliver effective and efficient support. Understanding the context and available resources is what was explored in this next part of the study.
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100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%
China Hong Kong Malaysia The Singapore Philippines South Korea Thailand Taiwan
Very important Somewhat important Neither important nor unimportant Relatively unimportant Very unimportant
In the next section, investment areas that needed more immediate attention were explored. Figure 8 on the next page shows which areas would be addressed over the coming two years, which for an IT project can be considered a very short timeframe. This means that if the hospital or facility hasnt already committed to these new systems, they have likely at least identified and planned to commit to them in the very near future.
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Centralised web-to-print on RESEARCH demand form management Electronic distribution of documents Workflow automation to reduce costs and errors None of the above
China
South Korea
Thailand
Taiwan
u Figure 8 Investment areas over the next 1 to 2 years period by geographical location (% of respondents by location).
From the respondents, we see that although IT executives and their staff agreed that ERM is a major point of concern, only more than half of respondents from China, Hong Kong and Malaysia could confirm that they were already committed to addressing ERM over the coming 2 years. Surprisingly, these three countries/territories also showed relatively fewer commitments to bringing better scanning and converting to digital formats. The three were also relatively less committed to launching centralised web-to-print ondemand ERM. Where these countries did show significant measures for commitment was in workflow automation to reduce errors. It is also worth noting that the majority of respondents from Hong Kong and China were from the public sector (61% and 81%, respectively), whereas the similar trends coming from Malaysia were shown from respondents mostly coming from private sector facilities (78%). This suggests that Hong Kong and Chinas public sector had already committed to ERM enhancements, whereas the private sector in these countries have either already settled these issues, or have not yet committed to them. Notably, respondents from Thailand and Singapore showed strong interest in scanning and converting documents to digital formats, as well as enhancing workflow automation in order to reduce costs and errors. Furthermore, about a third of respondents from Taiwan saw centralised print-on-demand as needed. It is also worth noting that respondents from The Philippines and China had significant responses as None of the Above, suggesting that although improved ERM may be needed by these respondents, the precise nature of these improvements fell outside the boundaries set by the survey.
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Quality Management (data collection, transparency, ERM processes, etc.) 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%
China Hong Kong Malaysia The Singapore Philippines South Korea Thailand Taiwan
Efficiency of document/Forms/ paper processes and workflow Strategic partnerships Acquisition of high-quality care patients Achieving cost reduction New Elder care services Improve Access to Clinical information Outcome Quality & Safety, Compliance Review and Audits Building operation efficiency and readiness for Pandemic Increase quality of patient related services Retain and attract the best nursing staff and physicians Other
A review of the responses shows multiple trends, but the most significant one revealed a general consensus around Quality Management. This one area was felt as the most important strategic concern for the future. For all countries, except for South Korea and Taiwan, which ranked Acquisition of High-Quality Care Patients and Achieving Cost Reduction, respectively, higher, Improved Quality Management was ranked highest, with the Singaporean respondents showing the least pronounced concern. For the other countries, quality management around data collection, institutional transparency, improved ERM processes and the like were at least twice more important than any of the other areas. This is likely when one considers how the future promises to be even more data-dependant.
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www.futuregov.net The countries that listed Quality Management as most important were China, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Thailand. As we saw earlier, the majority of responses from China and Hong Kong came from the public sector hospitals, whereas Malaysia and Thailand (80%) were from the private sector. This may be the case because the former countries have more public hospitals than private ones, but it can also be because across both private and public sector hospitals in these countries have yet to fully address shortcomings in these areas. Clearly, effective management of information is expected to occupy a significant portion of the respondents future. Of these, respondents from China showed the greatest concern, with nearly 40% of respondents noting that quality management must be addressed. Looking at the other end of the scale, folding new elder care into the strategic plan registered among the lowest among the respondents. This is quite surprising, given the predicted rise in the elder population in most of Asia Pacifics countries. One explanation of this finding could be that as an IT-related issue, improved elder care may simply not have yet registered on respondents awareness. Much as elder care may be a growing concern in the geriatrics ward, among sociologists, economists and the like, this may not have registered yet as a growing concern among the IT professionals and administrative staff. Another area of high interest is around increased quality of patientrelated services. This may be due to the increased presence of competing organisations in the patient market, and the rising awareness that patients are increasingly deciding where they seek their healthcare services. Improving the patient experience is an important part of practiced medicine, and improving the admission, stay and overall patient experience seems to be something that healthcare practitioners are paying more attention to. This seems to suggest that although respondents felt that improving how patient information is recorded and managed needs attention, respondents didnt feel that improving how this information is accessed is as important. This may also suggest that at this stage of the hospitals development, they just havent yet begun to address the complex issue of timely information access and its direct impact to patient safety and care quality improvement.
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Document Scanning Mail and parcel distribution In plant printing facility Fleet of copiers and printer management Records/ files management (printed) Records/ files management (electronic) Printed marketing and promotional Other
The results reveal an interesting correlation between the need for solutions and the degree to which an organisation will outsource to solve the challenges being faced by the organisation. For example, in locations like China, which communicated the need for improved ERM within the organisation, there hasnt been much in the way of getting help from an outsourced party. This may be due to the fact that there is a lack of outsourcing agents; that if there are agents, they have had difficulties with integrating into the country system; or that the survey simply didnt capture the route that China has taken in its outsourcing. In areas like Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, there are a few areas that have seen relatively strong outsourcing activity, such as in-house printing facilities, printer management, and document scanning, respectively. Respondents have clearly indicated the need for enhanced ERM, even the need for outsourcing in order to solve the problems they are facing in their daily workload, and yet the move towards outsourcing hasnt caught up. The demand may be strong but there is a lag in securing delivery.
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100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Procurement IT department CFO or Hospital controller Logistics Department Board of directors Government Officer or Representative Head of department CEO Clinicians Other
China Hong Kong Malaysia The Singapore Philippines South Korea Thailand Taiwan
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www.futuregov.net Generally speaking, IT Departments are given enough autonomy and responsibility to decide how IT budgets will be spent. This makes sense, as these professionals are generally well suited for knowing what is out on the market, what will fit the needs of the organisation, and they will have the contacts for purchasing and installing the new systems. The only responses that indicated that IT Departments were not the most responsible for IT investment were from Singapore and Taiwan. In these two countries, roughly equal decision-making power is shared by the IT Department, Department Heads and the CEO. A telling result is seen in respondents from China, where the secondmost powerful deciding power came from a Government Officer or Representative. In all these other countries, such a Government Officer ranked among the lowest in the hierarchy of IT spending decision making. It is also interesting to note that clinicians play a relatively minor or completely removed role in terms of the IT decision-making process. Although clinicians are likely involved in some of the operations that involve scanning, capture and other ERM processes, and they may have good input in terms of fulfilling their needs on the operational level, the results suggest that what hardware and software is at their disposal is decided by more technical professionals.
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Thailand Taiwan
Ranked as Relatively Unimportant (50%) Ranked as Most Important (50%)
China Return on Investment within 2 years Matches focus and mission of the hospital/ organisation Increase efficiency of the Human Resources We have endof-the-year budget to spend Increased quality of patient service Differentiate ourselves from other hospitals Matches strategic initiatives to insure a proper "balanced scorecard"
Ranked as Least Important (86%)
Hong Kong
Ranked as Least important (61%) Ranked as Relatively important (61%)
Malaysia
The Philippines
No significant trend
Singapore
Ranked as Relatively Unimportant (52%) Ranked as Relatively Important (91%)
South Korea
No significant trend
No significant trend
No significant trend
No significant trend
No significant trend
Ranked as Relatively Important (50%) Ranked as Relatively Important (18%) Ranked as Least Important (33%) Ranked as Most Important (67%) Ranked as Relatively Important (56%)
Ranked as Relatively Important (95%) Ranked as Least Important (95%) Ranked as Most Important (86%)
No significant trend
No significant trend
No significant trend
No significant trend
No significant trend
No significant trend
No significant trend
No significant trend
Ranked as Least Important (48%) Ranked as Most Important (39%) Ranked as Most Important (23%)
No significant trend
No significant trend
No significant trend
No significant trend)
No significant trend
No significant trend
No significant trend
No significant trend
No significant trend
No significant trend
Most important
Relatively important
Relatively unimportant
Least important
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www.futuregov.net For each item, respondents needed to rank it on a scale of 1 to 7, corresponding to a scale of Most Important to Least Important. When responses varied and the data points were scattered across the scale, this is indicated in the Table as No significant trend. Where there was a significant trend in the data, the percentage of respondents that had chosen that particular ranking is provided. The Table reveals how most respondents considered Increased quality of patient service as the Most Important measure of whether an IT project should be implemented. This is sensible enough, as a healthcare organisations mission is, after all, to serve patients. A very surprising result was that 86% of respondents from The Philippines measured improved patient service as Relatively Unimportant. Nearly half of the respondents from The Philippines ranked Differentiate ourselves from other hospitals as Most Important. Although there was general consensus on what was Most Important, there was no such trend in what was considered Least Important. From the Chinese respondents, nearly 90% considered an ROI of 2 years as Least Important. The Hong Kong respondents were similar, with two-thirds giving the same rank. Matches strategic initiatives to insure a proper balanced scorecard was something the Malaysian and the Philippines respondents felt was Least Important. Half of the respondents from Singapore and a third of respondents from Thailand felt that We have end-of-the-year budget to spend was Least Important.
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Patient satisfaction Physician satisfaction Cost savings Public image Quality of service Efficiency of care Return on investment Other
Singaporean and Thai respondents felt the ROI was a concern, and this was correlated to responses regarding improved cost savings. This may have been a result from a higher skew in the respondents coming from the executive office, people whose professional concerns are likely tied to such financial performance measures.
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www.futuregov.net The highest-ranked score was seen in the group from China, where two-thirds felt that improvements in quality of service was needed most, compared to a score of less than 10% for patient satisfaction. This result may have come from the pragmatic desire to deliver adequate or satisfactory care, given Mainland Chinas current challenges that were discussed above.
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100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%
China Hong Kong Malaysia The Singapore Philippines South Korea Thailand Taiwan
u Figure 14 Indication of an organisations dependence on paper-based processes to manage internal workflow and patient care (% of respondents by location).
Clearly, hospitals and other such organisations are still heavily dependent on paper-based processes to manage workflow and patient care. Surprisingly, respondents from technologically advanced cultures like Hong Kong and Singapore were outperformed by respondents from The Philippines and Mainland China. That respondents from Mainland China, South Korea and Taiwan were about evenly split, as opposed to the other respondents, seems inconsistent with perceptions of lacking infrastructure (e.g. in Mainland China) or advanced healthcare (e.g. South Korea) and may deserve further investigation.
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www.futuregov.net The follow-up question in the study was whether or not paper-based patient records were responsible for added errors or increasing risks to patients. Naturally, human error could also be involved when digital processes are used instead of paper-based ones, but many such IT innovations have been designed to reduce or remove the human-error factor. Figure 15 below illustrates responses to this question, recording the perceptions that human error plays in record keeping and the relation it may have to increasing the risk to patients.
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Yes No
u Figure 15 Whether or not manual paperwork contributes errors and increases risks to patients (% of respondents by location).
Again, it is interesting to note that respondents from China, The Philippines and South Korea had similarly matched results, and were somewhat evenly split on the question. Respondents from Malaysia and Singapore were closely matched in that risk to patients did increase when patient data were paper based, and these results were closely matched by Hong Kong respondents. That all the respondents from Thailand felt the risk was real indicates the strong favour towards moving to a more digital platform, as since nearly 90% of Thai respondents had indicated that their healthcare facilities were essentially dominated by paper-based processes.
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www.futuregov.net By comparing the findings of the previous sections, an even stronger correlation emerges. Figure 16 below reveals the relationship between the dependence on paper-based processes to manage internal workflow and patient care, and whether or not manual paperwork contributes errors and increases risks to patients. This is especially telling, as it shows what IT executives and staff feel is missing, if at all, and what may be needed to fill that gap.
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120 100 80 60 40 20 0
China Hong Kong Malaysia The Singapore Philippines South Korea Thailand Taiwan
u Figure 16 Agreement that organisational dependence on paper-based processes has contributed to errors (% of respondents by location).
All respondents from China, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Taiwan that had a dependence on paper-based processes indicated that this was what contributed to errors and increased risks to patients. In other words, for these respondents, this outdated dependence invariably led to error. Similarly strong but not absolute agreement was seen in respondents from The Philippines, Singapore and Thailand and South Korea, with the relatively lowest fraction of three-quarters of respondents from The Philippines were in agreement that that organisational dependence on paper-based processes has contributed to errors.
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www.futuregov.net Next, as shown in Figure 17, results were gathered regarding paper versus digital-format record keeping. From the Chinese respondents, for example, where roughly half said their processes were paper based, it was observed that about half of the respondents reported that their organisation had or was in the process of implementing an ERM. Similarly, nearly 40% of respondents from The Philippines and 62% from South Korea reported that their organisation had completed the roll-out of an ERM system. As well, around 80% of respondents from Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore reported that their organisation was in the process of introducing an ERM. It is of interest as well that a small but significant fraction of respondents from China, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan were unaware of any plans to implement an ERM in their organisation.
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100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%
China Hong Kong Malaysia The Singapore Philippines South Korea Thailand Taiwan
Yes, completed Yes, in progress No, but we plan to implement No, and we have no plans to implement
u Figure 17 Whether or not the organisation implemented, or is in the process of implementing, Electronic Record Management (% of respondents by location).
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100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%
China Hong Kong Malaysia The Singapore Philippines South Korea Thailand Taiwan
Less than 1 year 1-2 years 2-4 years 4-10 years We are not legally required to keep a hard copy of patient records
u Figure 18 Time period legally required to keep patient records, even after being stored digitally (% of respondents by location).
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180 160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 Procurement issues IT issues Lack of centralised vision during purchase cycles Organisational issues All of the above Other
China Hong Kong Malaysia The Singapore Philippines South Korea Thailand Taiwan
u Figure 19 - Why multifunction devices have not yet been connected to the network (respondents by location, multiple selections allowed).
When it comes to leveraging on the power of new IT devices and the benefits that they deliver to a department, having access to network functions is among the top benefits. Part of what makes todays capture-and-storage devices so appealing is that once the information has been stored in a central repository, it can later be accessed and cross-accessed by multiple users and for multiple uses. Hence, identifying resistance points or reasons why these devices havent been fully exploited is helpful for reducing waste, streamlining patient-data retrieval processes, and more. From the respondent data, it would seem that the greatest factors hampering connectivity in the healthcare organisation relates back to procurement and technical issues. In many cases, simply getting the technology in house is the main barrier, and in many other cases departments must find solutions that will specifically help the organisation within its context. A review of the data suggests that much as staff may want new technology and see it as a means to reduce inefficiency and mitigate patient risk, there remains the barrier of getting the hardware and software and ensuring that it actually works on the ground.
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Of note, respondents from Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea identified Lack of centralised vision during purchase cycles as a possible source of organisational inertia on the matter. This is especially interesting when matched to the responses of who was most responsible for decision making around IT acquisitions. Given that IT Departments, which generally have the technical knowledge needed to decide what is needed and how to use it, arent charged with the task of leading the organisation, it would seem that it is up to the CEO and the Executive Office to rise and lead in a more concerted effort.
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CONCLUSION
Planning Ahead Is Asias Healthcare Sector Ready for the Future? aimed at describing and capturing the fractured image of IT in healthcare in Asia, especially under the major changes that are anticipated to follow in the coming medium to long term. As healthcare costs and needs from a bigger, older and more discriminating population rise, so too will the challenges bloom for public and private healthcare organisations. Not only will physicians, nurses and support staff need to have the technical skills to serve their patients, but so too will the administrative and operational systems also need to work smoothly and efficiently. From the results, the following conclusions were found: Healthcare professionals across the region and organisational hierarchy see ERM as a critically important area of concern, where new technologies and customised solutions to patient information must be adopted. Where some countries have adopted more comprehensive IT platforms, they are being used and valued. In countries where these networked ERM solutions have not yet been adopted, the need remains. Healthcare professionals from across the organisation in both private and public sectors recognise that outsourcing is one way of quickly adopting and launching solutions, but the need to have these solutions customised to the local context is crucial. There remains much room for improvement when it comes to adopting scanning and imaging technology to convert paper forms into digital formats. In both the public and private sectors, although there are many cases where paperless systems are in place, they hardly work across the organisation or on the national level. Quality Management around data collection, institutional transparency and improved ERM processes was the most important strategic concern for the future. Increased risks to patients are believed to come from errors associated with workflows and processes that remain dependent on manual inputting across paper-based methods. IT Departments play the greatest role in deciding how IT budgets will be spent for local decisions within an organisation, yet for greater implementation it is up to the Department Heads and the Executive office to set the vision. If organisations havent yet scaled up to meet the challenge, it may be due to a lack of effective leadership or resistance to change, even if the benefits are clearly perceived.
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