Assessing the efficiency of Malaysia health system in COVID-19 prevention and treatment response

Abstract

Malaysia was faced with a life-threatening crisis in combating COVID-19 with a number of positive cases reaching 5305 and 88 deaths by 18th April 2020 (the first detected case was on 25th January 2020). The government rapidly initiated a public health response and provided adequate medical care to manage the public health crisis during the implementation of movement restrictions, starting 18th March 2020, throughout the country. The objective of this study was to investigate the relative efficiency level of managing COVID-19 in Malaysia using network data envelopment analysis. Malaysia state-level data were extracted from secondary data sources which include variables such as total number of confirmed cases, death cases and recovered cases. These variables were used as inputs and outputs in a network process that consists of 3 sub processes i) community surveillance, ii) medical care I and iii) medical care II. A state-level analysis was performed according to low, medium and high population density categories. The efficiency level of community surveillance was highest compared to medical care processes, indicating that the overall inefficiency is greatly influenced by the inefficiency of the medical care processes rather than the community surveillance process. Results showed that high-density category performed well in both community surveillance and medical care II processes. Meanwhile, low-density category performed better in medical care I process. There was a good overall performance of the health system in Malaysia reflecting a strong preparedness and response level to this pandemic. Furthermore, resource allocation for rapid response was distributed effectively during this challenging period.

Challenges Faced in Managing Covid-19 Pandemic Case Study: Malaysia

“…From the Figure 2, the significant challenges faced in managing COVID-19 pandemic is healthcare system and management. The COVID19 pandemic has developed rapidly in recent months since the outbreak, not only in Malaysia, but health systems in many countries have been implicated and heavily stressed [36]. The next significant is on financial resources.…”

Efficiency analysis in the management of COVID-19 pandemic in India based on data envelopment analysis

“…The DEA model and the Malmquist Index technique is used to measure the efficiency and productivity of country-level public hospitals of china ( Liang et al., 2017 ). The efficiency of Malaysia’s health system was calculated in the context of COVID-19 prevention and treatment response ( Hamzah et al., 2021 ). DEA technique is used to evaluate global response to novel 2019 Coronavirus-SARS-COV-2 ( Adabavazeh et al., 2020 ).…”

Introduction to the special issue: Management Science in the Fight Against Covid-19

“…In order to ensure timely turn-around, we have only taken papers which we could accept with minor revisions; as a result, we have had to reject many promising manuscripts. We are pleased to have been able to accept 12 papers [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. We are particularly proud to be able to highlight that "From predictions to prescriptions: A data-driven response to COVID-19" by Dimitris J Bertsimas and colleagues [1] has been awarded the Pierskalla Best Paper Award for 2020 by the INFORMS Health Applications Society.…”