Fifth International Conference on Construction in the 21 st Century (CITC-V) “Collaboration and Integration in Engineering Management and Technology” May 20-22, 2009, Istanbul, Turkey Outsourcing of Hospital Support Service in Malaysia: A Survey Results Suliahti Hashim, Abdul Rashid Abdul Aziz, Mastura Jaafar School of Housing, Building and Planning, University of Science Malaysia, Malaysia sulia295@salam.uitm.edu.my, arashid@usm.my, masturaj@usm.my Abstract In Malaysia, over the last decade, outsourcing has become one of the major issues in health care. Two major concerns are related to the practice. The first one involves the suitability of the outsourcing strategy, principally with reference to the outsourcing of hospital support service. The second one relates to the actual benefits of the outsourcing practice in terms of cost reduction and increasing efficiency. In order to achieve the research objective, a questionnaire was developed and, after a pilot test. It was mailed to public hospital development unit, service providers and consultant. The data gathered concerning their experience and knowledge and the response rate was around 39%. The survey results clearly demonstrate that to do the project successfully, a number of stages need to be considered in outsourcing strategies and process. These result also indicated that the outsourcing projects of public hospital in Malaysia are expand and increasingly in used. It is improving the service and getting more efficient to the service. Very few of the respondents agree on the inefficient and unsuccessful of the outsourcing public hospital support service project in Malaysia. Keywords Outsourcing, Outsourcing process, Hospital support service, Outsourcing strategies 1. Introduction This paper discusses the growth of outsourcing of hospital support service in Malaysian public hospital with the main focus on the effective outsourcing. The growth is directly related to the policy of Privatization Projects, undertaken by the Government of Malaysia. A related policy supportive outsourcing has been set from the Malaysia Incorporated, which influenced by perception of successful corporate-state relations in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore. This concept has been promoted by the Malaysian Government since 1983 with the aims of fostering complimentary links between the public and private sectors and minimizing unproductive competition and duplication between them (Ministry of Information, 1991). It is important to explore the meanings of the term “privatization”. In its general meaning, the Malaysian Ministry of Finance has defined privatization in very broad term as “the transfer of the public sector activities and functions to the private sector” (Barraclough, 2000). Therefore, in this paper, the term “privatization”, “outsourcing” and “contracting out” will be used interchangeably. Outsourcing specifically refers to the process of transferring a functional area that was previously managed and staffed within an organization to the third party, which it can be an individual, a partnership or a company (Young, 2001). 1051