Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Escalating healthcare costs has always been a concern to all health systems globally including Malaysia. Rising healthcare costs will have significant effects on Malaysian households, businesses, and governments and will eventually reduce healthcare affordability. This study aimed to explore the factors, cost drivers and possible strategies to control healthcare inflation. METHODS: Using a systematic review approach, extensive electronic and manual citation searches were performed to identify relevant studies. Four keywords were used to develop screening questions which were Inflation, Healthcare, Factors, and Strategies. Screening, data extraction, and quality assessment were undertaken by two reviewers at a time. Inclusion criteria consisted of studies from the year 2000 till 2018, while non-English, editorials, newspapers and non-retrievable articles were excluded. RESULTS: From a total of 1070 articles, 22 were included in the full review. Three main factors were identified to be associated with healthcare inflation. All these factors were related to either the healthcare market, health provider, or patient. Among these factors, medical technology advancement, aging population, and declining health status were repeatedly mentioned. Apart from that, a lack of enforcement in price regulation and payment system, increasing demand, and ineffective services were the main contributing factors. Various strategies such as strategic purchasing, effective legislation and enhancing cost-effectiveness services were implemented to control healthcare inflation. DISCUSSION: A country like Malaysia can learn from other countriesÂ’ experiences to control inflation in healthcare. Effective policies, robust implementation and close monitoring on the factors and strategies are the important mechanisms to control inflation in healthcare.
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@proceedings{APCPH-2019-185,
title = {High and Rising Healthcare Costs: What Can Malaysia Learn?},
author = {Nur Amalina Zaimi and Mohd Shaiful Jefri and Mohd Shahri Bahari and Juanita Halili and Masrol Hafizal Ismail and Mohd Ridzwan Shahari},
year = {2019},
date = {2019-07-22},
urldate = {2019-07-22},
journal = {6th Asia-Pacific Conference on Public Health 2019 Proceedings},
issue = {6},
abstract = {INTRODUCTION: Escalating healthcare costs has always been a concern to all health systems globally including Malaysia. Rising healthcare costs will have significant effects on Malaysian households, businesses, and governments and will eventually reduce healthcare affordability. This study aimed to explore the factors, cost drivers and possible strategies to control healthcare inflation. METHODS: Using a systematic review approach, extensive electronic and manual citation searches were performed to identify relevant studies. Four keywords were used to develop screening questions which were Inflation, Healthcare, Factors, and Strategies. Screening, data extraction, and quality assessment were undertaken by two reviewers at a time. Inclusion criteria consisted of studies from the year 2000 till 2018, while non-English, editorials, newspapers and non-retrievable articles were excluded. RESULTS: From a total of 1070 articles, 22 were included in the full review. Three main factors were identified to be associated with healthcare inflation. All these factors were related to either the healthcare market, health provider, or patient. Among these factors, medical technology advancement, aging population, and declining health status were repeatedly mentioned. Apart from that, a lack of enforcement in price regulation and payment system, increasing demand, and ineffective services were the main contributing factors. Various strategies such as strategic purchasing, effective legislation and enhancing cost-effectiveness services were implemented to control healthcare inflation. DISCUSSION: A country like Malaysia can learn from other countriesÂ’ experiences to control inflation in healthcare. Effective policies, robust implementation and close monitoring on the factors and strategies are the important mechanisms to control inflation in healthcare.},
note = {Type: POSTER PRESENTATION; Organisation: Institute for Health Systems Research, Shah Alam, Malaysia},
keywords = {curbing inflation, factors influencing, healthcare costs, healthcare inflation, strategies to control},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {proceedings}
}