TABLE 3.

Summary of survey findings—Malaysian Health System Preparedness and Adaptation online survey (Geneva, Switzerland. 2022).

	Survey question	Response	Clinical workers %	Non-clinical workers %	p-value	Chi2
Malaysian health system preparedness and adaptation
1	Did you feel the political decision makers in your country were aware of the risk to frontline workers?	Quite a bit + very	—	68	—	—
2	Did your healthcare workers receive adequate personal protection equipment dependant on their workplace setting?	No	3	32	<0.001	34.99
3	If you were on the frontline (in emergency departments, on respiratory, or ICU wards) taking care of Sars-CoV-2 positive patients, did you receive adequate personal protection equipment (PPE)?	Completely	83	—	—	—
4	How would you rate the severity of NCD service disruption (including elective surgery, follow-up clinics, routine care) during the pandemic?	Occasional + very often	54	57	0.5	2.39
5	Was the provision of individual protection devices adequate or inadequate?	Adequate	54	—	—	—
6	Were there contingency plans to shield the system in case of an external disruption like COVID-19?	No	30	28	<0.001	38.07
7	Do/did you anticipate an over burden on the NCD services when routine care eventually resumed?	Yes	59	36	<0.001	27.9
8	Do/did you have plans for gradual/spaced out resumption of routine care?	Yes	79	16	<0.001	60.23
9	Do you plan to evaluate the medical impact of this pandemic on NCDs?	Yes	—	40	—	—
10	Do you plan to evaluate the social and economic burden of this pandemic on NCDs management?	Yes	—	42	—	—
11	Is there a plan in place to screen the potential mental health impact of the pandemic?	Yes	—	43	—	—
12	As those with NCDs are the most vulnerable subgroups of patients, do you plan to target increased prevention, health education programmes towards them?	Yes	—	54	—	—
13	As those with NCDs are the most vulnerable subgroups of patients, do you plan to target increased outreach initiatives (using volunteers, increased personnel, etc.) and address accessibility (using telemedicine, mobile pharmacies, etc.)?	Yes	—	61	—	—
14	Would you agree/disagree with the need to ensure that whole populations should have increased health promotion, prevention schemes addressed to them to decrease vulnerabilities and predispositions to NCDs, with the goal of optimizing prognoses in the time of infectious epidemics?	Agree	57	100	<0.001	28.29
15	Would you consider using digital health applications for medical information sharing, especially for patients in multidisciplinary care settings?	Yes	75	83	0.484	1.45
16	Would you agree that digital health (eHealth or mHealth) can be integrated into your healthcare infrastructure to better care for your most vulnerable patients in crises such as this?	Disagree + strongly disagree	68	32	<0.001	15.77
17	To better maintain the normal flow of follow-ups and care of your country’s NCD patients, how likely are you to depend on telehealth, digital health, mobile health applications?	Very much	80	48	<0.001	29.12
18	Taking into account health literacy, access to mobile devices, and financial aspects, would digital health be an option for NCD patients to experience more autonomy over their care?	Yes	80	86	0.28	2.55
19	Did your country’s health system cope with the redistribution of resources (both human and economic) at the cost of continuous care of NCD patients?	Yes	—	70	—	—
20	Did you reorient national/regional guidelines and protocols to concentrate services in a setting suited to high-volume, high-acuity care available 24 h per day?	Yes	41	5	<0.001	36.16
21	Was redirecting chronic disease management to focus on maintaining supply chains for COVID-19 an option?	Yes	52	19	<0.001	20.64
22	If redirection of chronic care was an option, how successful was it in terms of delivery of care?	Met standards	25	68	<0.001	30.22
23	If redirection of chronic care was an option, how successful was it in terms of output?	Met + above standards	68	58	0.17	1.85

Note: Frequency in percentage; p-value from chi²; missing p-value and chi² due to no comparison group or expected value <5.

Total respondents n = 191