A stint of Malaysian Health Atlas

Hensem tak aku time muda

Salam semua,

Amacam? Semua ok ke tak ok? Aku ringan ringan aja. Anyways, setelah membaca posting maut dari pada encik sharpener kepada yam tuan punya Negara ini. Kesian aku tengok si abang FZ ini dengan migraine yang di alaminya, tetapi bila lu orang calling dia sure dapat dengar deringan yang agak tight yang boleh bikin lu orang nak shuffle macam kuzi (di filem gila gila remaja).

Setelah sekian aku lama tak tulis orang putih, aku nak try bagi pandangan aku terhadap pandangan encik FZ.

Here we go.

With the current state of the Malaysian hospital to tell, the world health organization (WHO) has rated the current facilities in Malaysia as on par with the UK and the states. However, during the study undertook by the WHO in 2005, both private and public facilities were measured. Currently, the country has 135 public hospitals nationwide with the population of 24 million. The shortage of medical professionals in Malaysia has not been a new topic which we all have been grumbling about. With the perks offered by private hospitals, there is no chance the ministry of health (MOH) can compete with the offers from their counterpart to grab Malaysian best for public hospitals. Unless, when one felt the obligation to serve the country like a terminator. With bunch of legislations created to standardize the procedure avant-etre a doctor, the government may be able to bond its young doctors in the public hospitals for at least 5 years before one being caught by the more established, well funded and fit hospitals.

With the open market or the so called quasi-capitalist model which our government is practicing, sorry to say, the medical industry is changing in Malaysia. From the research conducted by Nielsen earlier this year, visits in public hospital have dropped over the past 2 years while visits to private hospitals had increased by 15%. Reasons from this analysis were primarily due to fundable insurance policies in the Malaysia and the massive opening of private medical centres such as K.O Medical Centre in Subang, Normah Medical centre in Kuching and many other private centres all over the country.

Yes, the market is changing for both Public and Private medical centres. In the private medical sector, medical centres are becoming more niche and more specialize on the services which they offers. Unlike the past where by the private medical sector competes with public sectors. Now, both private and public are relying on each for patients. The public hospitals do realize that they cannot provide an ideal service for all and if they cannot cater a patient in the government backed hospitals, they will be referred to a specialist in a private medical centre. In the private sector itself the playground had changed from a large scale to a smaller scale to reduce cost effectiveness, efficiency and over reliance on debt nor equity. We have not seen a rapid establishment of a large scale medical centre over the past one year, whereby there are more small scale medical centers were established. To name a few, entities such as KL Heart Care, Primanora Medical centre, Roopi Medical Centre, Loudres medical Centre and others has been developed to provide services for both private patients as well as public patients through public hospitals.

Not only that, with the allotment of Malaysian government budgets for the healthcare industry is considered as small. With the $ 4.8 billion allocated to enhance health facilities and provide equipments, increase supply of medicines, develop human resources, intensify research and enforcement activities as well as to build more hospitals. So how much was allotted through our monthly income tax payments to the government for health care? $ 452 per pax (currently our labour force consists of 10.6 million personnel).

Apart from that, RM 26 million was allocated to increase the allowance of 3,800 SPECIALIST in the public sectors which is equivalent to RM 6,842.11 annual increment in allowance for medical specialist or equivalent to RM 570.18 increment in the monthly allowance for these specialist. So how many doctors do we have over all? In Malaysia, we have at least 90,000 personnel working in the Health industries. The figure was obtained from WHO and it consists of both doctors and midwifery personnel. Don’t you think the government should think about the upstream personnel instead of focusing on the specialists (downstream).

Sorry to say Mr. Tuxman, I don’t think that you be getting extra-plus action with your darling wife through the current budget or model.

Plus with the current short fall on exports this year, I don’t think that the budget for the year 2010 will be so great.

The government should not only focus solely on the health care industry. The government should scale through the whole reward scheme in the public sectors to attract high quality personnel which can provide quality services for the public. Why? They are the caretaker of the country.

There are various approaches which the government can look through. They are health and wellness, retirement and savings, time away, non fiscal benefits and non monetary benefits. Last call duit pon bukan boleh bawak masuk kubur.

Jack “ha, cakap banyak, jom join gomen pastu kita buat union” Lingam