Children with disability require comprehensive and continuous rehabilitation. Community-based rehabilitation (CBR) was developed to fulfil this need and has benefited children of various ages both in the rural and urban societies. In Malaysia, the government largely fund rehabilitation of children at the CBR centers. However, to date research data on the outcome of CBR on children with disability in the country is scarce. This study was intended to determine the outcome of CBR and its associated factors among children with disability. Outcome of rehabilitation was determined with regard to changes in activity of daily living ability with the use of the Barthel Index at 6 months post-CBR. Analysed factors were age, baseline score of the Barthel Index, frequency of attendance in therapy sessions and number of therapy received. Data was analysed using paired t test, Wilcoxon signed ranks test and Spearman correlation test. A total of 220 children with disability aged 4 to 18 years and 220 caretakers from 29 selected CBR centres in Pahang, Terengganu and Kelantan participated in this study. The results showed a small increase in the Barthel Index score of the children, with mean change ± SD equals 0.90 ± 4.54 (p=0.003) following rehabilitation. Attendance to therapy sessions was low, with <50% attended three quarter or more sessions of the total sessions offered. No analysed factors were found to be associated with the change in the Barthel Index (p>0.05). As a conclusion, the outcome gained through CBR is too small for the duration of rehabilitation implemented. The delivery of CBR program need to be reviewed and enhanced to improve its effectiveness on children with disability.

The objective of this study is to examine the impact of the casemix reimbursement on the hospital revenue at three selected hospitals (Type B, C and D) reimbursed using 602 groups from 14,749 cases. The results of the study showed that the hospitals received 32.4% higher income when reimbursed with Indonesia Case Bases Groups (INA-CBG) as compared to fee-for-service. Type D hospitals is the biggest gainer with 81.0% increased in income followed by Type B hospital that obtained 34.7% higher revenue. In conclusion, the use of INA-CBG as a prospective payment method has benefitted the hospitals by the increase in the revenues. It is hope that additional resources gained in this programme will allow the hospitals to provide optimum care to the population. It is recommended that the JKA management will use the INA-CBG casemix data to monitor the performance of the hospitals to ensure that quality and efficiency of the services provided to the population is continuously maintained.

A good quality leader is vital in ensuring effective and efficient services rendered to patients. However, as to date, little is known on the leadership styles of managers in Military Hospitals in Malaysia and the region. The aim of this cross-sectional study was to determine the leadership styles and identify the influencing factors, among Military and Non-Military managers in five Military Hospitals in Malaysia. A pre-tested 20-item questionnaire was distributed to eligible managers in the hospitals. Based on the total score, the leadership style of managers was classified into Transformational (TS) and Non-Transformational style (N-TS). Among the 501 respondents, 375 (74.9%) of them were Non-military managers and 126 (25.1%) of them were Military managers. 46.8% (n=59) of the managers with military background practiced TS while only 27.7% (n=104) of Non-military managers have TS (X2 =15.662; p <0.001). Managers aged 40 years and above, male, with higher educational level, served longer in the service, attended in-service training and participated in other capacity building activities were more likely to practice TS. Analysis using stepwise multiple logistic regressions proved that predictors of TS style are educational level (AOR=2.319; 95% CI=1.300,4.134), working experience (AOR=1.075; 95% CI=1.049,1.102), Military managers (AOR=1.759; 95% CI=1.104,2.802) and attended in-service training (AOR=2.070; 95% CI=1.369,3.129). In conclusion, the Military Hospitals have the benefit of being managed by Military managers that practice TS. Educational level and in-service training are two most important elements that influence the practice TS among the managers in these Military Hospitals.

Life expectancy from birth is increasing dramatically. Due to this increase, the population of elderly people will increase. Consequently, geriatric related illnesses will increase leading to increased necessity to build up comprehensive and coordinated cost effective health care services appropriate for elderly people. Frailty is not a disease, but rather considered as a syndrome requiring comprehensive and multidisciplinary care approach. It is a prevalent reversible pathological transitional stage between healthy aging and disability. Frailty is associated significantly with increased health care utilization, mortality, and comorbidities such falls, hospitalizations, physical dependence, and poor perception of health. The aim of this review is to compile existing literature on the economic cost of frailty syndrome among elderly people in the recent years. Search queries were constructed to look for articles related to the economic cost of frailty in the electronic databases available at the National University of Malaysia library for articles published between the years 2011 and 2019. The accessed electronic database included New England journal of medicine, Science Direct, SCOPUS, BMJ, Cochrane, and Wiley Online Library. Articles included in this review when they were original research, participants were defined as frail elderly, manuscripts written in English language, and involved clearly described measures of frailty cost. Among the literature, twenty one articles were found to satisfy the inclusion criteria of the review process. The cost of care for frail elderly was ranging from US $ 8,620 to 29,910 per patient per year. The cost of health care was ranging from US $ 2,540 to 221,400. The health care cost was accounting for 40% to 76% of the total care cost. Hospitalization cost was the highest, it was ranging from US $ 806 to 152,726. Outpatient cost was ranging from US $ 200 to 18,000. Medications cost was ranging from US $ 7 to 3,434 per frail elderly patient per year. Home help cost was ranging from US $ 804 to 19,728 per frail elderly patient per year. In conclusion, frailty is a costly syndrome. It can be considered as a cost effective target for health promoting interventions to contain future elderly cost.

Presently there is a gross lack of information on cost and cost weights in many developing countries that implementcasemix system. Furthermore, studies that employed Activity Based Costing method (ABC) to estimate the costs of radiologyprocedures were rarely done in developing countries, including Malaysia. The main objective of this study is to determinethe costs of radiology procedures for each group in casemix system, in order to develop cost weights to be used in theimplementation of the casemix system. An economic evaluation study was conducted in all units in the Department ofRadiology in the first teaching hospital using the casemix system in Malaysia. From the 25,754 cases, 16,173 (62.8%)of them were from medical discipline. Low One Third and High One Third (L3H3) method was employed to trim theoutlier cases. Output from the trimming, 15,387 cases were included in the study. The results revealed that the totalinpatients’ charges of all the radiology procedures was RM1,820,533.00 while the cost imputed using ABC method wasRM2,970,505.54. The biggest cost component were human resources in Radiology Unit (Mobile) (57.5%), consumables(78.5%) of Endovascular Interventional Radiology (EIR) Unit, equipment (81.4%) of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)Unit, reagents (68.1%) of Medical Nuclear Unit. The one highest radiology cost weight, was for Malaysia DiagnosisRelated Group (MY-DRG®)B-4-11-II (Hepatobiliary and Pancreas Neoplasms with severity level II, 2.8301). The methodof calculation of the cost of procedures need to be revised by the hospital as findings from this study showed that the costimposed to patient is lower than the actual cost.

Introduction: This review aimed to summarise the trend ofmammogram screening uptake published in local studiesbetween years 2006 and 2015 among the Malaysian womenaged 40 years and above, and identify the associated factorsand barriers, as well as discuss limitations of the studiesand research gaps.Methods: A systematic review was conducted on breastcancer screening studies among Malaysian women,published between January 2006 and December 2015.Online databases were searched using keywords:“mammogram”, “mammography”, “uptake”, “breast cancerscreening” and “Malaysia”.Results: Thirteen original articles were reviewed. The rate ofmammography uptake ranged between 3.6% and 30.9%among the general population, and 80.3% among personnelof a tertiary hospital. Factors associated with mammogramscreening were clinical breast examination, age, income,knowledge on breast cancer and mammogram, perceivedsusceptibility to breast cancer, ethnicity and education level.Barriers to mammogram screening were lack of knowledge,embarrassment, fear of cancer diagnosis, perception thatbreast screening was unnecessary, lack of coping skills andpain during procedure. However, almost all of the studiescould not be generalised beyond the study sample becauseof the limited number of sites and respondents; and mostdata were self-reported with no objective measures of theresponses.Conclusion: Mammogram screening uptake among womenin selected communities were generally low. Further studiesinvolving the general population are essential. Futurestudies should also explore the availability, affordability andaccessibility of this service especially in the pursuit ofachieving universal health coverage in breast cancermanagement.

he increased use of health care services by elderly has placed greater pressure to an already strained health care resources. Thus, an accurate economic cost estimation for specific age-related diseases like dementia is essential. The objectives of this project are to estimate costs of treating patient dementia among Malaysian elderly in the hospital settings. Two types of data were collected: Hospital costing data (using costing template) and patient clinical data (using questionaire). The cost analysis for hospital setting was carried out using a step-down costing methodology. The costing template was used to organize costing data into three levels of cost centers in hospitals: overhead cost centers (e.g. administration, consumables, maintenance), intermediate cost centers (e.g. pharmacy, radiology), and final cost centers (all wards and clinics). In estimating the cost for each cost center, both capital cost (building, equipment and furniture cost) and recurrent cost (staff salary and recurrent cost except salary) were combined. Information on activities which reflects the workload such as discharges, inpatient days, number of visit, floor space etc., are gathered to determine an appropriate allocation factor. In addition, for each final cost center, the fully allocated costs are then divided by the total unit of in-patient days to obtain the cost of providing services on a per-patient per-day of stay basis, referred as unit cost. The unit cost is finally multiplied with the individual patient’s length of stay to obtain the cost of care per patient per admission. All these steps were simplified by using the Clinical Cost Modeling Software Version 3.0 (CCM Ver. 3.0). The mean cost of dementia cases per episode of care was RM 12,806 (SD=10,389) with the length of stay of 14.3 (SD=9.9) days per admission. The top three components of cost for the treatment of dementia were the ward services 8,040 (SD=7,512), 62.78% of the total cost, followed by the pharmacy 1,312(SD=1,098), 10.25% of the total cost and Intensive Care Unit 979 (SD=961), 7.64% of the total cost. A multivariable analysis using multiple linear regressions showed that factors which significantly influence (p<0.05) the treatment costs of dementia cases were the length of stay (p<0.001), followed by age (p=0.001), case type severe (p=0.005) and study location (p=0.032). However, the factor length of stay is the tremendous parameter. In conclusion, data collection from selected hospitals as well as patient level data from medical record unit were successfully used to estimate the provider costs of hospital for the elderly with dementia disease. Results from the project will enable an assessment on the economic impact and consequences of cognitive impairment in an aged population. A cost quantification and distributive mapping of the burden of care can assist in policy implementation through targeted intervention for at-risk groups, which will translate into savings by means of delayed onset or progression of dementia.
dementia ; Provider Cost ; CCM ; Step-down costing

Health care has emerged as one of the fastest growing industry worldwide. This induced health care costto rise tramendously. However, it is important to preserve high quality health care services that are equitable and affordable. In many countries, people are expected to contribute to the cost of the health care. Are populations ready to accept the concept and willing to pay for health financing scheme? What possible factors that may associate with their decision? This is the objective of the study, to examine the relevance evidence for this through a systematic review of literatures.We systematically searched Ovid MEDLINE and Google Schoolar databases until April 2016. We assessed the study population willingness to pay for health financing scheme and determine the significant variables that associate with WTP. 19 full-text articles were included in the review. Factors that were found significantly associated with WTP for health financing scheme by many studies were age, education, income and residential locality. Other factors that also found associated with WTP were health care services utilization and expenditure. The review findings showed that WTP for health financing scheme is beyond the households’ financial capacity and has multifactorial influences.
Willingness to pay, health financial scheme, health insurance, social health insurance

Occupational cancers, including mesothelioma and lung cancer are linked to the use of asbestos. Annually, at least 100,000 global deaths are attributed to asbestos exposure putting a heavy burden on national budgets. Expenses incurred on treatment of asbestos related diseases (ARDs) reduce households and national resource savings, while ARDs culminate in terminal burdens. The objective of this study is to measure the economic burden of ARDs and to assess the economic impact of asbestos consumption. The health and economic burden of asbestos was estimated in macro-global consumption-production model using production function frontier-based and generalized least squared approach for asbestos products and cost tabulation. Production, in metric tons (Mt) was adopted as a dependent variable among explanatory variables, including consumption. Information on treatment cost of asbestos related diseases (mesothelioma, asbestosis and lung cancer) was obtained from costing information and published literatures. Annual total economic burden of asbestos is at USD 11.92 billion. Out of this cost, USD 4.34 billion per annum is the economic burden of managing three common ARDs. The cost of compensation for patients suffering ARDs is USD 4.28 billion. From the remaining USD 3.3 billion, USD 2.93 billion is the value of asbestos consumed in 2003 and USD372.15 million is the loss of earning due to hospital visits and admissions. For every USD 1 spent on consumption of asbestos, global economy has to absorb almost USD 4 due to health consequences of ARDs. Banning of asbestos production and usage in production of goods has far-reaching impacts on household welfare, health and economic development. The insights revealed are expected to inform decision makers the need to ban all forms of asbestos, especially in developing countries where usage is increasing.

The Malaysia Diagnosis Related Group (MY-DRG®), established since 2002, is a patient classification system that stratifies disease severity and categories patients into iso-resource groups. Casemix can be used to estimate costs per episode of care and as a provider payment tool in health services. Casemix has also been used to enhance quality and improve the efficiency of health services. Hence, estimation cost per DRG is important especially in developing countries where costing data are still scarce. We embarked on a study to determine the costs of the diagnostics laboratory services for each MY-DRG® based on the severity of illnesses. Most costing studies for diagnostic laboratory services usually focus on the cost of consumables and equipment alone and employed the step-down costing method. Very few studies applied Activity-Based Costing (ABC) method to estimate the costs for diagnostic laboratory services. This study was done with the purpose of developing the diagnostics laboratory cost using the ABC method. All medical cases discharged from UKM Medical Centre (UKMMC) in 2011 grouped into MY-DRG® were included in this study. In 2011, a total of 2.7 million diagnostic laboratory investigations were carried out in the Department of Diagnostic Laboratory Services in UKMMC. ABC was conducted from January to December 2013 in all units of the department. Cost of 242 types of diagnostic laboratory services were collected using a costing format. Out of 25,754 cases, 16,173 (62.8%) cases were from the medical discipline. After trimming using L3H3 method, 15,387 cases were included in the study. Most of the cases were on severity level one (44.6%), followed by severity level two (32.3%) and severity level three (23.1%). The highest diagnostic laboratory service weight was for Lymphoma & Chronic Leukemia, severity level III (C-4-11-III) with the value of 5.9609. Information on seven cost components was collected form each procedure: human resources, consumables, equipment, reagents, administration, maintenance and utilities. The results revealed that, the biggest cost component for human resources was in Molecular Genetic Unit (89.6%), consumables (34.8%) from Tissue Culture Unit, equipment (11.2%) and reagents (68.1%) from Specialized Haemostasis Unit. In conclusion, the accurate and reliable cost of the diagnostic laboratory services can be determined using ABC. Top management of the department should be able to use the output of the study to take appropriate steps to reduce unnecessary wastages of resources in the various units of the services.