Materia Medica Malaysiana

Report on long wait at hospitals ready soon

SHAH ALAM: The Health Ministry’s study on the long wait faced by outpatients at government hospitals will be completed next month, said Health Minister Datuk Chua Soi Lek.

He said his deputy Datuk Dr Abdul Latiff Ahmad would be submitting a paper to him on the details of the current situation and proposals on how it could be improved by next month.

The ministry plans to cut waiting time to not more than 90 minutes.

“We will announce to the public the details of how the new system works once we have completed this study,” Dr Chua told the media after attending the ministry’s management conference here yesterday.

“We can understand how patients feel as they are required to wait for registration at the counters and then (for) the hospital staff to retrieve their records.

“The agony continues as they wait to see the doctor, and go for x-rays or urine tests before obtaining the prescriptions and subsequently the medicines,” he said.

Dr Chua said he believed that the long waiting hours could be reduced by efficient management of staff and by a systematic process of handling patients.

“We are not merely looking at increasing the amount of human resources at hospitals to achieve this goal but on ways to optimise their services at work,” he said.

Dr Chua also said the ministry was left with the challenge of equalling the ratio of government doctors between the peninsula and Sabah and Sarawak.