Reasons for poor reporting by Socso doctors

NST: Doctors on the panel of Socso are aware of the various occupational diseases, but there are reasons for the poor reporting, says the Malaysian Medical Assocation (MMA).
One of the reasons cited by the MMA president Datuk Dr Teoh Siang Chin was the frequent movement of workers.
He said the reluctance of employers to comply or adhere to certain health examination criteria was another factor that restrained the work of doctors.
"The limited payments available for the total comprehensive tests discourage them from carrying out the necessary tests for confirmatory diagnosis," Dr Teoh said yesterday.
He was responding to an NST report on Saturday quoting Human Resources Minister Datuk Seri Dr Fong Chan Onn as saying that thousands of workers were losing out on Socso benefits due to under-diagnosis of occupational diseases by panel doctors.
Some of the 4,690 doctors on the Socso panel have taken it upon themselves to limit investigations leading to a negligible number of workers being identified with such diseases.
Workers have lost out in medical treatment, compensation and possibly, disability benefits.
Most of the cases referred to Socso involved noise pollution with occupational diseases that went undiagnosed, including skin and lung-related diseases and muscular skeletal disorder.
Using the United Kingdom standard of one worker with an occupational disease to every industrial accident, Malaysia should have registered 69,132 workers with occupational diseases.
But only 183 cases of workers with occupational diseases were recorded last year.
Dr Teoh said it was simplistic to compare the numbers in the UK as the type of industries was different and Malaysia relied heavily on foreign workers.
He called on Socso to give detailed report of the types of claims made, the number of claims rejected and the reason for the rejection.
"Socso has been rather rigid in the implementation of the rules and this has made it extremely frustrating for the patient, employer and doctor," said Dr Teoh.
The MMA, through its Society of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, was conducting regular courses to update its members on this issue.
Dr Teoh said the MMA was willing to co-operate and collaborate with the various bodies to develop the discipline of occupational medicine.