Minister Of Health: Digitalization Of Health Is Important For Service Transparency

Minister of Health (Menkes) Budi Gunadi Sadikin, at the Awarding of the Anti-Corruption Award and Gratification Control of the National Health Insurance Program (JKN) in Jakarta, Thursday. (ANTARA/Sean Muhamad)

Minister of Health (Menkes) Budi Gunadi Sadikin said digitizing health information is important to realize transparency of public health services.

"It is important to digitize and integrate digital information so that it is transparent (public health services)," said the Minister of Health at the awarding ceremony for the anti-fraud and control of the gratification of the national health insurance program (JKN) in Jakarta, reported by ANTARA, Thursday, December 7.

Transparency in health services, said the Minister of Health, can be used to find fraud or fraud in financing JKN services.

Budi mentioned several examples of fraud in JKN service financing which are often found, such as a diagnosis that is not in accordance with the diseases found by Danphantom billing or false claims without any action (bullying patients).

For this reason, the Minister of Health proposed to BPJS Kesehatan to integrate the data it has with data held by the Indonesian Ministry of Health (Kemenkes) to facilitate the tracking of the fraud.

"So that we know, for example, there are hospitals that carry out diagnostic procedures, the Ministry of Health has the authority to be able to foster and take action against the hospital," he said.

The Minister of Health said that the phantom billing incident does not only involve health care facilities (fasyankes), but also involves individuals, both medical and health personnel who work in certain health facilities.

"Now, with the Ministry of Health's control over medical and health personnel, we can record which hospitals routinely carry out phantom billing, which medical personnel write receptome billing, and who is the health worker doing the phantom billing," he added.

In addition, the Minister of Health stated that digitizing health information also plays a role in reducing health costs, because all information about health services can be known to the public in a transparent manner, so that the public can avoid differences in service standards provided.

"Because the information is not symmetric. I have a cold given drug A, given B medicine, the difference can be up to five times, six times, sometimes even up to ten times," he said.

For this reason, the Minister of Health hopes that the digitalization of health information that is currently being developed can be used to serve public access to easy, cheap, and quality health.