About Hospital Support Services

28 October, 1996 auspiciously heralded the commencement of the 15 year concession to the the private companies with the signing of the concession agreement between the government and the three Consortia, Faber Medi-serve Sdn. Bhd., Radicare (M) Sdn. Bhd., Tongkah Medivest Sdn. Bhd to provide hospital support services for all the zones. . The concession involves the provision of services in Clinical Waste Management; Cleansing; Linen & Laundry; Facility Engineering Maintenance; Biomedical Engineering Maintenance and the development of a computer based Maintenance Management Information System (MMIS) to manage all aspects of the five services.

In order to enhance the services, computerised assets registers were developed for Facility Engineering Maintenance and Biomedical Engineering Maintenance Services. Currently work is also in progress to achieve standards set by the Ministry of Health in all services. Where Cleansing and Linen & Laundry Services are concerned most consumables, supplies and equipment were in place by the first quarter of 1997.

To provide Biomedical Engineering maintenance support to surrounding hospitals, the Consortias have set up, regional support centres, service centres and mobile maintenance units throughout the concession area.

Clinical Waste Management Services initially commenced with operation of the some existing hospital based on incinerators located in zones taken over from the Ministry of Health. In addition, plans are in hand to build more regional clinical waste incinerators. Of these, construction of incinerators in Kamunting and Sibu have been completed and both are now operational.

Cognizant of the need for quality assurance and safety at all workplace and in our services, ISO awareness training was conducted and completed at each zone and headquarters. Safety committees were formed in headquarters, zone offices and hospitals as part of our commitment to provide a safe and healthy work environment for all employees, customers and the community in which we live.

In the area of management information systems, we continue to aim at excellence in technology with the installation of the latest management information system in a core network of 64k leased lines to all zones. To date, all hospitals in our concession are now on-line with our headquarters and Ministry of Health. At the same time, a "train the trainer" programme was conducted for supervisors and managers at hospitals to train their subordinates on the use of the system to ensure efficient and effective operations.