Imagine that you need to see a doctor in a health clinic or hospital. You go to the website of your health clinic or hospital where you have been registered before and easily schedule your appointment according to your doctor’s availability on that day. Or you can do a walk-in visit. Within a few seconds after you confirm your registration at your health clinic or hospital, your personal medical record information is retrieved and prepared electronically for your doctor.
Imagine that you walk to your doctor’s office and your doctor quickly and easily reviews all your past medical history, treatments and allergy information in front of his laptop or tablet. Then she takes your health measurements, perform diagnoses on the symptoms of your illness and record all of these in her laptop or tablet. Within a few minutes, she orders all the needed prescriptions and treatments using her laptop or tablet.
Imagine that as you walk out from the doctor’s office to the pharmacy, your medicines are being prepared for you. When you arrive at the pharmacy, your medicines are ready for you to be picked up. You can either pay your bills or go home right away because your insurance has enough coverage for your current visit.
Imagine even bigger. Imagine that our central government has the tools to collect aggregated health data, such as disease trends, medicine usage – just to name a few, from all over the country. Imagine that the government also has the tools to analyze the collected data and to predict dangerous epidemics in certain areas of the country. It can then prepare a quick response with proper medical staff and medicines to those areas if the prediction has come true. Or it can allocate appropriate medical resources in the areas where the mortality of mothers and babies is high.
All these dreams motivated Sadikin Djumin to return to Indonesia after twenty years of comfortable life in the United States. This paper tells a story of Djumin’s journey towards his decision to return back to Indonesia. It is a journey of faith, full of hills and valleys, of a Christian, who at the same time a sinful human trying to make sense of the calling of God for him in Indonesia. He also provided his view on the current healthcare situation in Indonesia. This paper closes with his sharing on the daily struggles living and working in Indonesia. It is our hope that this paper will give us enough inspiration and courage to take a journey home to Indonesia when God calls.
God’s calling through ICF and FICA
Sadikin Djumin was born in Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia. He earned both his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from The Ohio State University. After graduated from college, he worked in the healthcare industry, specializing in healthcare systems integration. His last occupation before returning to Indonesia was with McKesson, top 15 Fortune 500 companies in United States in 2012, headquartered in San Francisco. His current responsibilities in Indonesia are to develop healthcare information system and solution for the Indonesian market. As in Christian ministries, Djumin served as an elder in ICF Columbus for many years and President of FICA from 2000-2010.
It was during his college years that Djumin’s life was transformed deeply by the love and grace of God. He joined and served in Christian Fellowship at Columbus (ICF-Columbus) in 1992. He was then introduced to the ministry of Fellowship of Indonesian Christians in America (FICA) through several committed leaders of ICF Columbus.
Through many discussions, seminars, conferences and mentorship by ICF Columbus and FICA, Djumin was convicted with God’s calling to live as an Indonesian and to love and build Indonesia for God’s glory. That he was born as an Indonesian is never a mistake, but it is a beautiful God’s plan. That fact requires him to embrace God and His grace, His plan and values, and to take real sacrificial steps to love and build the nation. His redeemed life by Jesus Christ is to be lived out as a life of grace and service for God’s glory. He also attended John Stott’s London Institute for Contemporary Christianity in 1999, sponsored by the gracious missionary couple, John and Ruth Chambers. His three-month study in the Institute strengthened further his burden for Indonesia.
Why ICF was so special in Djumin’s life? It was because in ICF he learned his true identity in Christ and as a Chinese Indonesian. His faith and understanding about God’s love grew stronger and deeper in Jesus Christ. ICF provides a gracious environment to allow “learning by doing” mistakes on running ministry and to build up one another through accountability, confession and repentance. It also creates a good training ground with plenty of learning opportunities on how to truly serve people, to organize events, to manage people, to plan and execute ministry activities and to be a good servant leader. The key is our own initiative and willingness to get involved, participate, to be humble and continue learning.
Why FICA was so dear to Djumin’s life? It was because he found a closely knitted fellowship of brothers and sisters from different ICFs and states, who shared the same burden for Indonesia. In FICA, the ICF vision to be a faithful Christian leader in Indonesia was further sharpened and stretched beyond discussion subject and towards taking real steps and actions for Indonesia. The two discovery trips that Djumin took with FICA to Indonesia showed him a real picture of Indonesia. Many people still live in poverty with lack of adequate education and healthcare. Justice only serves the elites, the powerful and the rich people. Natural resources are exploited in such a way that causes natural disasters to the people living in the areas.
Started in 2007, Sadikin Djumin was challenged by the question on how he would live out the rest of his life. If his heart was truly called for loving and building Indonesia, he had to live in Indonesia. The question was first asked by his wife and continued to pop out from time to time through conversations with his Christian friends, sermons and his quiet times. His first reaction was to sweep the question under the carpet. But it didn’t work any longer as the question hit him very hard and deep inside to the point that he understood that it was God who he had to answer.
After struggling for some time, Djumin decided to be honest to God and himself. He finally sat down and faced his fears of returning back to Indonesia. The fears of leaving the “comfortable American Dream” in the States, moving into uncertainties and unknowns in Indonesia, and rising and providing for family in Indonesia were the three major fears that he listed down. The underlying issue below these fears was about faith and trust in God. In short, his ultimate fear was about whether God would take care of and provide for him and his family in Indonesia.
During this period of truth seeking, God kept reminded Djumin of His love and provision. He was led to reflect and meditate on Matthew 6:19-34, which is about fixing our focus on Jesus and on living for eternal matters while God himself will take care of our earthly needs. The truth of God and His Word comforted Djumin and his fears, and gave him a peaceful heart beyond his own understanding. In 2010, he and his pregnant wife made the monumental decision to bring their two boys to go back to Indonesia for good, “jobless” and “homeless” in Indonesia.
General Healthcare Condition in Indonesia
Currently working in healthcare field in Indonesia, Djumin has been observing the current condition of healthcare in Indonesia. Healthcare is an important issue in Indonesia as in the United States. Major stakeholders in healthcare are patients, healthcare providers (clinics, hospitals, laboratories and radiology centers), medical staffs (doctors and nurses), insurance companies, drug manufacturers, pharmacies, and governments (central and local). Healthcare is a very important subject for both local and central governments as well as for the people who need the service. Currently, both local and central governments allocate the second largest spending budgets for healthcare, after education.
Despite the large allocation of spending budgets, our healthcare service in Indonesia generally speaking is still underperforming. This is commonly caused by two factors: inefficiency and lack of well-trained/skilled medical staffs. The first issue can be solved by applying technology while the second one with skill-equipping training.
Inefficiency in our healthcare system is due to many operational processes, such as in hospitals and health clinics, are still being performed manually. Health data is entered and retrieved manually by staff. Therefore, missing patient medical file is a common case. Health reports that hospitals and clinics are required to submit to government are usually late with information that is not up to date.
In some hospitals, manual processes of operations have been computerized into systems. However, those computer systems many times are not integrated among them to make systems communication and data exchanges happen in real time. Inefficiency occurs when staff from one department walks to another to exchange data, and when there are data discrepancies between departments, which both departments have to sort them out.
Lack of skilled medical staffs is another key challenge, especially in understanding the disease coding standards. These codes are used to diagnose patient’s illness and therefore the consequent treatment. Therefore, doctors and nurses need to have adequate trainings to use these codes and record them properly in their patients’ medical records. The patients’ disease codes can help hospitals and clinics to create statistical information on, for instance, the top ten diseases that they treat. This statistical information is also useful for government to understand the healthcare situation in Indonesia and take necessary steps, such as to anticipate potential outbreaks.
To improve efficiency, hospitals and health clinics need a good hospital information system (HIS). The heart of good HIS is electronic medical record (EMR) that is well integrated with modules that perform comprehensive clinical operation and management functions. It allows patient’s medical record move electronically along with the patient as she moves from one unit of service to another while capturing new information about patients’ disease diagnoses and treatments as prescribed by their doctors.
A good hospital information system provides good reporting and real time information dashboard for hospital’s directors. These important features help the directors to monitor operational performance of their hospitals in a real time and to make decisions accordingly.
Another important feature of a good hospital information system is the ability to integrate easily with other applications in a hospital using international data exchange standards. This feature enables HIS to communicate and exchange patient data with other related systems. It also allows a hospital to use the best applications in the market and to add new applications as the hospital grows without the need of replacing HIS.
For future’s development and improvement, Indonesia healthcare system needs to deploy a clinical pathway system that complies with disease treatment guidelines from Department of Health. This system provides a platform for creation and deployment of benchmarks on disease treatments. It assists doctors with recommended guidelines in providing treatments to their patients. This system will provide tremendous assistance to doctors and nurses serving in remote areas, where information access and update are very limited, if not non-existence.
For healthcare service providers (hospitals and health clinics), clinical pathway helps tracking all disease treatment costs in their facilities. The cost reports by the system help hospitals and clinics to control treatment costs and further improve efficiency. Patients can enjoy the benefits of the system as they have assurance that their illnesses are treated with the best available practices. Insurance companies can use clinical pathway’s treatment cost information to help improving their healthcare coverage offer.
When there exists a solid platform that integrates networks of hospital information systems and other healthcare related applications, data from all healthcare players in the country becomes very important and valuable to the government. The result of analyzing the data can provide a comprehensive picture and forecasts of health condition in Indonesia. From this picture and forecast, the government can make decisions to allocate its resources to improve healthcare services and to handle certain health situations, such as allocating appropriate medical resources to cope with outbreak of diseases or to help to prevent potential outbreaks.
Daily Living in Indonesia
According to Djumin, living in Indonesia especially Jakarta with its traffic is very challenging at the first several months. The culture of materialism is very evident in people’s lifestyle, everyday conversations and media advertising. All the corruption cases in Indonesia have its core value in greed and get-rich-quick-without-hard-working mindset. Demand and pressure by society and even by family to be successful that is valued only by how much money and possessions that one has are enormous. All these real conditions easily overpower and put unnecessary burdens on people to pursue materialistic values – and Christians are not the exceptions.
Although sound depressing; however, victories in overcoming these conditions are possible if and only if we rely on God’s promises on His faithful providence for those who love and commit to Him. We need to remove ourselves beyond all those stressful, demanding conditions and inconveniences by focusing on our life purpose in Indonesia as we continue seeking God’s guidance and calling. This requires us to be courageous to reject the world’s value system and to embrace God’s values. It also challenges us to take ownership on the issues in Indonesia and bring the issues in the light of God’s Word and principles. It requires us to work hard, think outside the box and do everything with all our heart as we do it for the Lord (Colossians 3:23).
In order to achieve that, Djumin states that he needs to rely completely on God in his daily life. Seeking God every morning by reading His Word and praying has become very important to his and his family’s daily life. When he becomes too worry about providing for his family at the moment or for the future, God always reminds him with Matthew 6:19-34 – the verses that he meditated before returning to Indonesia and gave him a peaceful mind. Another verse that always strengthens him is Jeremiah 29:11, which God says that “For I know the plans I have for you. They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope”.
Secondly, Djumin believes that having a fellowship with Christians who has the same burden for Indonesia is very important. It gives him many encouragements to push forward. This is very crucial in his journey in Indonesia especially in the times when he is so discouraged and frustrated with the conditions in Indonesia, and when he needs to take a firm stand to honor God by rejecting the world’s value system. This kind of fellowship also helps providing him with some new ideas or sharpening his ideas.
The last point that Djumin shared from his experience is not to be afraid from failures. He learns a lot from his own failures. When he fails, he humbly comes to God asking for strength. If he makes mistakes, he will ask for God’s forgiveness. The key here is to expect failures, learn from them and keep trying and never give up.
As a closing, Djumin might not realize that his courage has inspired the community of Indonesian believers in the U.S. He has served as a model for students to be crazy enough to follow God’s calling. Lastly, his story has served as a welcome challenge for his brothers and sisters with families waiting to go back to Indonesia. They have to follow Mr. Djumin’s example to put their family in the proper hand; in the hand of God that has plans for a good future and hope.