Optimizing Quality of Care and Patient Safety in Malaysia: The Current Global Initiatives, Gaps and Suggested Solutions

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Demand for health care service has significantly increased, while the quality of healthcare and patient safety has become national and international priorities. This paper aims to identify the gaps and the current initiatives for optimizing the quality of care and patient safety in Malaysia. DESIGN: Review of the current literature. Highly cited articles were used as the basis to retrieve and review the current initiatives for optimizing the quality of care and patient safety. The country health plan of Ministry of Health (MOH) Malaysia and the MOH Malaysia Annual Reports were reviewed. RESULTS: The MOH has set four strategies for optimizing quality and sustaining quality of life. The 10(th) Malaysia Health Plan promotes the theme “1 Care for 1 Malaysia” in order to sustain the quality of care. Despite of these efforts, the total number of complaints received by the medico-legal section of the MOH Malaysia is increasing. The current global initiatives indicted that quality performance generally belong to three main categories: patient; staffing; and working environment related factors. CONCLUSIONS: There is no single intervention for optimizing quality of care to maintain patient safety. Multidimensional efforts and interventions are recommended in order to optimize the quality of care and patient safety in Malaysia.