Incentives for doctors working overtime

Star: PUTRAJAYA: The Cabinet has approved the Health Ministry’s proposal for incentive payments to be made to doctors and specialists working overtime and weekends.
Health Minister Datuk Liow Tiong Lai said this would allow more elective surgeries to be held on Saturdays and more patients to seek treatment at certain health clinics after office hours.
“We already have these after-office hours services at 33 of our hospitals. The ministry decided to expand this to 16 health clinics so that non-critical patients can seek treatment at these places instead of coming to the emergency units at public hospitals,” he told reporters after chairing the post-Cabinet meeting here yesterday.
“It will also allow elective surgery to be conducted in 19 hospitals on Saturdays. These are among our measures to reduce the waiting time for patients from 45 minutes currently to 30 minutes. It will cost the ministry a total of RM19.3mil in allocation.”
On Feb 6, Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Ismail Merican announced that doctors at selected clinics would be paid more than double or RM80 per hour in incentive payment for overtime while specialists would be paid RM200 per hour to work after office hours and on weekends.
Dr Ismail had said then that the proposal was pending approval from the Cabinet.
Liow said elective surgery on Saturdays were necessary because the number of operations had increased by 23% from 636,867 in 2002 to 782,514 in 2006.