KUALA LUMPUR: The Madani Medical Scheme was expanded to the entire country on Friday, Health Minister Dr Zaliha Mustafa told the Dewan Rakyat.

She said the scheme, which was to address the issue of overcrowding at government facilities, was expanded following the good response it has received since its introduction.

"Now more than 1,300 private clinics have registered and cooperated in this programme as a panel to provide health services.

"The Health Ministry also welcomes more private medical clinics across the country to register as panel clinics of the Civil Medical Scheme.

"I also hope that the members of parliament can help promote this scheme in their respective constituencies to ensure that more people benefit from these health facilities," she said.

Dr Zaliha said, since the scheme's introduction, 130,000 outpatient health treatments for acute cases have gone through the private clinics with the number of treatments recording almost 4,000 cases a day, benefitting 80,000 households.

Speaking during the winding up of the 12th Malaysia Plan (12MP) mid-term review for her ministry, she gave her assurances of security when it comes to patients' data recorded through the digitisation of electronic medical records (EMR), saying that it was in line with the ICT Security Policy 2019 and the Personal Data Protection Act 2010.

Dr Zaliha said enforcement, control and measures to protect data and confidentiality of patient information handled electronically have been set with access limited to qualified parties in accordance with the Guidelines for the Handling and Management of Patient Medical Records at the ministry's facilities.

"Trail audits are also carried out to control access to the EMR periodically to ensure compliance with established policies, in addition to establishing a two-factor authentication system or multi-level authentication to access medical records.

"In addition, encrypting data when transferring and storing data electronically as well as managing regular access rights that are only given based on work needs," she said.