Materia Medica Malaysiana

National service for private doctors

KUALA LUMPUR: Some 8,000 private doctors and specialists nationwide will have to perform a stipulated number of hours of compulsory service in government hospitals every year.

Health Minister Datuk Dr Chua Soi Lek said their services were necessary to help lessen the heavy workload of doctors and specialists now working in government hospitals and for them to gain more experience.

“Government doctors and specialists, also numbering about 8,000, are looking after 48 million out-patients and 1.7 million in-patients nationwide a year,” he said after a dialogue with the Association of Private Hospitals Malaysia (APHM) committee members here yesterday.

To date, there is a shortage of 3,300 doctors in the government health sector.

Dr Chua said the ministry would consider making the compulsory service a condition for the renewal of the annual practising certificate.

He said a joint committee represented by the ministry and the private healthcare sector, including the APHM, would be set up to work out the details for the compulsory service.

“These include the stipulated number of hours, which hospitals they will serve and how much they will be paid.

“But I don’t think they want to be paid as it is a form of social contribution,” he said.

Dr Chua said the compulsory service was well-received at yesterday’s dialogue

Health Minister Chua Soi Lek
APHM president Datuk Dr Ridzwan Bakar told reporters later that many private specialists, who lectured at public universities before, were willing to serve part-time.

He said the logistics had to be worked out before the compulsory service could take off. Malaysian Medical Association president Datuk N. Arumugam did not want to comment on the move.

Fomca secretary-general N. Marimuthu said the Government should provide private doctors and specialists with tax incentives to compensate them for their voluntary ser-

vice in government hospitals.

He agreed that they could help ease the workload in government hospitals and cut the waiting time for patients.

“But making it a condition for them to be able to renew their annual practising certificate is tantamount to a kind of underhand tactic.

A senior medical specialist said the ministry had paid about RM25 an hour to private doctors to work as government medical officers previously but the response was not good.

“The ministry should instead send its patients to be treated by general practitioners to ease the burden on its outpatient clinics,” he said, adding that the Medical Act must be amended if the ministry wanted to make compulsory service a condition for the renewal of the practising certificate.