Singapore hospital targets SE Asian patients

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."