PSM chairman Dr Michael Jeyakumar Devaraj said internal audits conducted by hospitals offering the full-paying patient (FPP) scheme since 2007 were “quite critical” of the initiative, having identified numerous shortcomings.
He said health minister Dzulkefly Ahmad should study the internal audit reports and, if they aren’t as bad as what PSM was told, should release them for public viewing before implementing the private wings scheme, which Jeyakumar claimed was just an “avatar” of the FPP.
Jeyakumar said the FPP scheme actually created a serious conflict of interest for the specialists who participated in it.
The FPP scheme allowed senior doctors to see private patients “after office hours” in government hospital premises and charge them private sector rates.
He added that many senior government specialists took part in the FPP judiciously and limited their private patient time to less than 10 hours per week.
“But there were a significant number who spent excessive time seeing their private patients. These over-enthusiastic specialists were able to earn more than twice their government salary through this scheme,” he said.
“This had a deleterious effect on the morale of the other specialists who had to bear the responsibilities of looking after ordinary ‘non-paying’ patients and impacted the training of young specialists.”
Jeyakumar said government-run hospitals were already burdened with a lack of senior and experienced specialists to treat the more complicated cases and train the younger specialists.
He said about 75% of specialists with more than 10 years of experience post-specialisation, were now serving in private hospitals.
“This leaves only 25% of senior specialists in government hospitals, where over 75% of the in-patients are being treated and the new generation of specialists are being trained,” Jeyakumar added.
He said the lack of experienced specialists translates into longer waiting times for patients with complicated conditions, delays in diagnosis and treatment, misdiagnoses, inadequate training for younger doctors and more stress for junior doctors dealing with the heavy patient load.
Earlier, FMT reported that Galen Centre for Health and Social Policy CEO Azrul Khalib had flagged concerns over the private wing proposal, including a lack of capacity in government facilities, especially in terms of doctors, nurses and diagnostic equipment.