Government Hospitals May Not Accept Patients From Private Hospitals

Government Hospitals May Not Accept Patients From Private Hospitals

TEMERLOH, June 9 (Bernama) -- The Health Ministry may cease the practice of government hospitals accepting patients from private hospitals for post-surgery treatment.

Minister Datuk Dr Chua Soi Lek said the co-operation between government and private hospitals, established on mutual understanding and on humanitarian grounds, had long existed.

He added that it was unfair to put the blame on government hospitals if patients from private hospitals who were brought there died.

Dr Chua was referring to a complaint by family members of a rubber tapper who died at the Sungai Petani Hospital Wednesday.

They claimed that P. Rajamah died due to the hospital's delay in admitting her.

A report in a newspaper Thursday said that Rajamah was supposed to undergo an operation to reduce a swelling in the brain at a private hospital but was sent to a government hospital because the Intensive Care Unit at the private hospital was full.

Speaking to reporters after a working visit to the Temerloh Hospital today, Dr Chua said it had become a trend for private hospitals to send their patients to government hospitals on the excuse that they did not have ICU facilities or the patients could not meet the high cost.

"After getting the payment (for the surgery), patients are sent to government hospitals and, when the patients die, we (government hospitals) are blamed," he added.

Dr Chua said he did not want the government hospitals to be blamed for the death of patients from private hospitals.

"We are being accused of not attending to the patients, making them wait too long .... We have to review this and, perhaps, will cease the co-operation with private hospitals like in the case of accepting their patients for post-surgery treatment," he told reporters after a working visit to the Temerloh Hospital, here Thursday.

Earlier, in his speech, Dr Chua said the government had no plans to build new hospitals under the Ninth Malaysia Plan.

However, he said, several hospitals would be upgraded to ensure quality service for the people. He said the ministry would increase the number of health clinics, adding that there were 4,000 clinics nationwide.

-- BERNAMA

The job of the MOH is to see that there is a win-win utilisation of both the public and private medical services in order that the patients benefit. Just like gomen hospitals and health facilities, private medical clinics and hospitals come in all shapes and sizes with varying equipments, staff, expertise and facilities. Often gomen health clinics and smaller hospitals are not properly nor fully equipped to handle all kinds of patients and often patients have to be transferred for them to receive optimal medical management or followup intensive treatment after initial stabilisation. Often this is faced by the smaller private hospitals and clinics. To deny patients further treatment in gomen hospitals just because they have been initially treated in private hospitals is to deny them proper treatment. What the MOH should do is to come up with a protocol for proper and safe transfers of such patients when the private hospitals do not have the expertise or equipments or facilities to properly manage the patients. Private medical practitioners should also liase with their counterparts in gomen hospitals to ensure that when the need arises, there is proper and safe transfers of these patients between facilities. Communication breakdowns and mis-communications should be reduced to the minimum.
Just because of the recent case of Rajamah the established co-operation between gomen and private hospitals based on mutual understanding and on humanitarian grounds should not be cast aside. The MOH should instead fully investigate this case and apportioned blame correctly. In the case of Rajamah, interventions by none other than MIC president Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu and state executive councillor Datuk V. Saravanan were said to be needed before Rajamah could get admited to the ICU of Sungai Petani Hospital.