“Private hospitals need to maximise the use of their day care services. They can emulate public hospitals where pain-free hospitals, day of surgery admission (DOSA) and minimal invasive surgery have been adopted to allow patients to be discharged on the same or following day,” he said.

He was speaking to reporters after opening the inaugural Ramsay Sime Darby Group specialists conference here, today.

According to Dr Noor Hisham, day care services refer to the practice of planned admission to provide diagnostic and therapeutic services within the day of admission.

He said this, in turn, reduced hospital care cost for overnight stays and lessened surgical waiting time.

Dr Noor Hisham made the call as less than 10 per cent of day care centres were being utilised in both private and public hospitals in the country.

“Day care centres in hospitals are under-utilised here (in Malaysia). For example, only 45 per cent of cases are done in the day care centre at Ipoh hospital. We should work towards increasing the percentage like hospitals in the United States and Japan,” he said.

He added that insurance companies should review their policies to allow patients to make their claims if they were admitted to day care centres because currently, insurance companies only allowed patients to make claims if they were admitted as in-patients.

Apart from that, Dr Noor Hisham said the ministry was looking at proposals of building aged-care centres in the country as 15 per cent of the Malaysian population were ageing.

On a separate note, he also noted that there were no new Zika cases reported in the country as of today.

The one-day conference was aimed at bringing healthcare specialists together with the goal of building a network for future collaborations and opportunities.