This city centre hospital has a big demand - from millenials

By Nurfilzah Rohaidi and Shanty Citra

Interview with Dr Lipin Tjung, Director of Murni Teguh Hospital Sudirman Jakarta, Indonesia.

Millennials in Indonesia are experiencing a significant rise in spending power - which could be a boon to the country’s sluggish economy, the Jakarta Post reported recently. Young Indonesians aged 21 to 39 spend half their income on consumption, such as travel and digital entertainment, according to a recent study by United Overseas Bank Indonesia.

For Dr Lipin Tjung, Director of Murni Teguh Hospital Sudirman Jakarta, the key to serving this discerning group of consumers is to build teams that are aligned to one core vision. Her hospital primarily serves millennial patients, who have different healthcare needs and expectations from other age groups, Dr Lipin says. “Our patient population aren’t children nor the elderly, but mostly those within the productive age - from 20 to 40 years old.”

For instance, the hospital has a key focus on developing its Metabolic Centre to address the rising rates of heart disease in younger patients. “We have some patients, mostly young executives, who suffered from heart attacks in the middle of meetings. Within six months’ time, we already had three to five cases like that.”

Stroke and heart disease are the top two causes of death in Indonesia, according to Dr Iwan Dakota, President Director of the country’s national heart centre. “There is a rise of non-communicable diseases among Indonesians, which is the health ministry’s main area of concern,” he told Hospital Insider recently. The ratio of cardiologists and patients is still “very low”, he added.

Dr Tjung is currently recruiting cardiologists for the Metabolic Centre, but on a broader level, she acknowledges that the biggest challenge her hospital is facing today is in developing human resources. “When we took over this hospital, our human resources still carried the old culture. They did not understand about transformation within services, and we also had a lack of doctors,” she explains.

Her first act as director was to prioritise recruiting new doctors. At the same time, she hopes to build a new culture and mindset within her growing team. “I need to push them to learn that we need to achieve excellence service while being aware of patient and environment safety, and how important it is to care for patients and colleagues,” she says.

It is important to cultivate the right mindsets in staff to serve the unique needs of millennials. “One way to motivate them to join is by asking them, together, to build a metropolitan hospital that can fulfill the needs of office workers in the city,” Dr Lipin said during a panel discussion at the recent Clinical Effectiveness CEO Summit, hosted by Hospital Insider and Wolters Kluwer.

Across Indonesia, the economy is transforming as millennials enter the workforce. For healthcare leaders, what is clear is the need to evolve services and internal cultures to meet changing patient needs.