KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 18 — The government will be allocating RM100 million for private hospitals to treat Covid-19 patients, as well as non-Covid patients from the public sector, Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said today.
As of today, the government has not yet released details on the payment structures for the treatment of Covid-19 and non-Covid public patients in private hospitals. Different private hospitals have different costs and charges, based on their facilities and specialist resources.
“To continue the spirit of cooperation between the public and private sectors in combating the Covid-19 epidemic, private hospitals have agreed to accept and treat both Covid-19 and non-Covid-19 patients to reduce the pressure on the public health system,” Muhyiddin said during his announcement of the government’s new stimulus package, the Malaysian Economic and Rakyat Protection Assistance Package (Permai)
Association of Public Hospitals Malaysia (APHM) president Dr Kuljit Singh previously told CodeBlue that private hospitals are not expecting a disruption of care for their non-coronavirus patients, although they will be managing Covid-19 cases.
Dr Kujlit said that there may be areas in the hospital that are not suitable for Covid-19 hence, those areas can be used for non-Covid patients.
Besides that, Muhyiddin, during his speech, also said that construction companies during the Movement Control Order (MCO) are made compulsory to provide full accommodation for their workers and to restrict the number of workers at the construction site.
“In line with this, employers are advised to tighten SOP practices, improve accommodation and movement control of foreign workers, as well as increase screening to support efforts to curb the spread of Covid-19.”
Muhyiddin said that the Social Security Organisation (Socso) is also involved in screening for Covid-19 among registered foreign workers.
“Screening costs will be fully borne by Socso in the red zones to identify Covid-19 clusters at the workplace,” the prime minister added.
“From December 1, 2020 to January 17, 2021, the number of foreign workers who have undergone screening is 160,982.”
Furthermore, the prime minister said in order to encourage more individuals to undergo Covid-19 screening privately, the scope of tax relief for full health screening expenses that was increased from RM500 to RM1,000 as announced in Budget 2021, has now been extended to cover Covid-19 tests.
