Clinical Pathway as a Strategy in Improving Healthcare Quality and Cost Containment

The increasing health care cost and public awareness on the delivery of high quality ser­vices has forced healthcare service providers to look into the healthcare delivery system. Clinical Pathway (CP) has been introduced in many hospitals and has been accepted as a beneficial tool in assisting healthcare organizations worldwide. Further, the CP also pro­vides consistently high quality and coordinates services with minimum resources. It is proven to be a beneficial tool in other countries. CP is recently being introduced into the Malaysian healthcare system. The aim of this article was to high­light the benefits of CP in improving healthcare quality and controlling the medical cost. The relevant articles have been reviewed. The majority of literature reviewed con­cluded that there were positive effects in implementing CP. The CP was found to be significant in re­ducing length of stay and medical cost. The introduction of evidence based medicine, clini­cal outcomes, clinical audit, multidisciplinary communication, teamwork and care planning were also improved by CP. The challenges for healthcare providers and healthcare man­agers are to participate and be fully committed in path­way development and implementa­tion in order to improve healthcare quality and cost control.