Health Minister Dr S Subramaniam said this was one solution the government was considering in stemming the brain drain from the public health sector to the private health sector.

At a press conference after the Health Forum 2016, Subramaniam explained that the brain drain was due to the massive gap in wages between government doctors and private doctors. It mainly affected specialists rather than general practitioners (GP), he added.

“In terms of GPs, we have no more brain drain,” he said adding the income gap between public and private specialists, such as cardiothoracic specialists, was so wide that it was difficult to stop the brain drain.

Subramaniam said the government was looking at ways to resolve the issue and one way was by allowing government doctors to do some degree of private practice.

This, he explained, would allow them to earn extra income by working after office hours in private clinics or hospitals.

The MIC president said this proposal had “more or less been approved” by the other relevant government agencies.

However, he said the implementation structure still needed to be worked on so that the plan does not hinder the government’s service delivery mechanism.

Subramaniam said another solution was to increase the number of Jusa (Grade) C positions within the government service so that the government doctors can be given higher positions and better pay.

On the issue of specialists, Subramaniam said there was a need to increase the number of specialists the country produced.

He said since 2013, the government had increased the number for specialisation slots in medical universities from 300 to 1,000.

This, together with other specialisation programmes in overseas universities, brought the number of specialists produced annually to 1,500.