BUSINESSMEN USING DOCS AS PROXIES TO OPEN CLINICS by FDI Shah Alam
I read with amusement the above article which was headlined in the mainstream media stating that only doctors are allowed to open clinics. Doesn’t the MOH have better things to do? Clearly this does not bear logic.
Large private hospitals in this country with all their various specialist clinics are owned by such corporations as KPJ which are public-listed, Sime Darby, Tabung Haji, Pantai Hospitals, Sunway, Gleneagles, are all owned by businessmen. They employ or contract out services to a large number of doctors. The Raffles Medical Group in Singapore is also owned by businessmen and runs a chain of 60 medical clinics in various parts of the island.
In fact it is to the advantage of doctors that businessmen are partners/owners in these ventures as it would bring in much needed investment capital and management expertise to upgrade services and also frees the doctor to focus on what he knows best — doctoring, and leave matters pertaining to customer service, marketing, accounts, IT, billing, credit control and banking to people who are well-versed and trained in these areas, unless of course the MOH would like to see our doctors become ruthless businessmen attending share market reviews instead of medical conferences.
If this rationale was applied to other industries, then buses must be owned by bus drivers or conductors, engineering companies be owned only by engineers or Genting should not own a power plant as they are only experts in gambling and Manchester United must necessarily be owned by Bobby Charlton or Ryan Giggs and not the Glazer brothers. We might as well dismantle the KLSE.
The statement by the MOH official further states that these arrangements contravene the Private Healthcare Facilities and Services Act 1998 (PHFSA). This would mean then that the Act would directly contradict established Malaysian business rules and company regulations lending further credence that the PHFSA was a cut and paste legislation engineered by a few incompetent MOH officials and passed through an ignorant parliament oblivious to the existing laws of this country.
The official further states “..unscrupulous businessmen might get off scot-free as the law is silent on their participation in the business”. Silent? Whatever happened to collective responsibility and how is it possible that the law is silent on such important matters. Is the Medical Practices division implying that the AG’s chambers who supposedly vetted this Act were sleeping on the job?
However what was clearly inappropriate was the reporter asking the doctor for his original APC? It appears the Star’s reporters have now become quasi health ministry enforcement officers. This report appears to have been designed, with the help of a possibly bored Medical Practices division, to go on another round of GP bashing to gain some cheap publicity.
If the Medical Practices division is serious about proper pharmaceutical efficacies based on evidence-based medicine, they should immediately send in their enforcement officers to seal all the traditional sinseh shops which sell roots and herbs of questionable medicinal value which carry the risk of causing severe peptic ulcers, liver and kidney failure to the unsuspecting.
While Singapore is dismantling many of its anti-business regulations causing the Singapore Medical Association to withdraw guidelines on medical fees for fear of contravening the Competition Act, our MOH officials are on the reverse gear and seem completely unaware that the world is hurtling inexonerably towards globalization. Cooking up regulations so that you can hide under the shell of protectionism will only mean we will be left behind and may suffer a fate worse then Proton.
There are far greater issues this country’s healthcare system is facing and they are serious. The absence of discussion in the mainstream media is so glaring that one has to assume that it probably has more to do with protecting its political owners and masters rather then sticking to the thin narrow line of professional journalism.
Ambulances that don’t have petrol, the high number of dengue deaths especially in Selangor, the ministry’s uncompleted and crumbling hospitals and last week, the question of patient’s having delayed access to heart treatment causing many of them to die on the waiting list are issues that require focused attention.
Unless the MOH is rudderless, which it currently appears to be so, this is clearly no time to be petty unless of course the MOH is using issues of this nature to deflect recent criticisms of its poor services in which case it should perhaps put its house in order before trying to clean up others.