Singapore hospital targets SE Asian patients
The National University Hospital of Singapore, which aims to attract wealthy patients from neighboring countries, recently invited The Jakarta Post's Bali-based correspondent I Wayan Juniartha to observe its facilities and attend a seminar it hosted. The following is his report.
Equipped with sophisticated medical technology and professional staff, the Singapore-based National University Hospital (NUH) is primed to become a major health care provider in Southeast Asia, with an aim to attract more international patients from neighboring countries.
The effort, which is focusing on a customer-driven and customer-focused service paradigm, is spearheaded by the 10-month-old business development department, which manages the International Patient Liaison Centre (IPLC).
"The point is that we want to provide a personalized and seamless service to our customers. In short, we want to hold the patient's hand and take them wherever they want," Business Development Department's Senior Manager Kamaljeet Singh Gill said.
He then pointed to a sign on the wall, which reads, "We hold the interest of the patient paramount." "That's what we want to achieve, that's our core value," he added.
The first change the department introduced was the establishment of the 24-hour Helpline (65-779-2777), a one-stop information source for NUH's international patients. The Helpline provides the patients and potential customers with information concerning medical referrals, appointments, assistance for admissions, evacuation, repatriation, travel arrangements, accommodation, ambulance and emergency care services.
"The patient can call at any time of day, seven days a week, our staff will be glad to help and to assist them. If the patient wants an appointment with an NUH specialist, we will contact the specialist, set up the date and later inform the patient about the schedule. So the patient does not need to spend much time or energy in setting up the appointment," Singh said.
The IPLC also offers "extended services", such as picking up the patients who are first-time visitors to Singapore, at the airport, arranging accommodation and assisting during their stay at NUH.
"These services are free of charge, we just want to make sure that the patient experiences a comfortable and hassle-free stay," he said.
A spacious comfortable room called the Garden Lounge has been allocated as a resting room for international patients, who are waiting for their appointment with the hospital specialists.
"Our staff are trained to give what the patients want and need, and not what we want to sell," Singh added.
And the efforts have produced a profound impact, particularly on better relationships between the patients and the hospital staff.
Currently, a huge portion of international patients treated at NUH are from Indonesia, followed by Malaysia and the Indian sub- continent.
"In the last six to eight months we've received around 16,000 international patients, around half of them are from Indonesia," Singh said.
In order to increase the level of service among the hospital's 2,000 staff, NUH also launched various training programs. One of those programs has been involving executives from various Singaporean companies, such as the Raffles Hotel, IBM, Singapore Airlines and the Ritz Carlton.
"We call it the Learning from the Best Series. Each month we invite an executive of that company to give a talk here at NUH. By doing so, we will be able to learn from their experience, and thus give us a knowledge to set up our own program," NUH's Acting Chief Operating Officer, Joanne Tay-Yap said.
She admitted there is still a long way to go before the NUH achieves the level of service that they had dreamed of. Yet, she was quite optimistic that it was not an unreachable goal.
One of the satisfied customers was noted Indonesian lawyer Trimoelja D Soerjadi, who in December 2001 spent three days in the hospital to have his hemorrhoids treated.
When he had his first hemorrhoid operation in 1970 in a hospital in Surabaya, he recalled that the operation was so painful that it traumatized him; scaring him off from undergoing a similar procedure when his hemorrhoids disturbed him again in 1979.
But when Trimoelja was on a business trip in Singapore, one of his local colleagues advised him to give the NUH a chance and he decided to give it a try.
"The IPLC staff picked me up and briefed me with all the necessary information. The medical procedure was fast and almost painless. Can you imagine that it was a professor that performed the operation on me? And he surely did an excellent job on that."