By John Edwards

June 28, 2010—Ipoh, one of Malaysia's main cities, is located approximately 125 miles north of the country's capital, Kuala Lumpur. At the city's main medical center, Pantai Hospital Ipoh, radio frequency identification is helping administrators provide better patient care despite a rapidly growing local population and a chronic skilled labor shortage.

Pantai's RIFD initiative is part of a larger effort to transform the hospital into a top-tier medical facility that meets the needs of both caregivers and patients while controlling costs. "What we've basically done over the last two years is to reexamine the whole business model, and then introduce change management into the hospital," says Dilshaad Abas Ali, M.D., the hospital's CEO. The Ipoh facility, a unit of Malaysia's Pantai Hospital Group, is a general acute-care private hospital that serves several regional communities.

At Malaysia's Pantai Hospital Ipoh, RFID is helping nurses provide better patient care.

Pantai, which opened its doors in April 1996 with 76 beds, has rapidly expanded to 180 beds and now has plans for future growth. And yet, for most of the past decade, the hospital's administrators have struggled with two fundamental challenges: a growing patient load and a chronic scarcity of skilled caregivers. "What's happening in Malaysia today is that we're having a shortage of nursing professionals," Dilshaad says. "There is an exodus of people running to the Middle East, the U.S. and the U.K., because of [their] more lucrative salaries and [employment] packages."