Congratulations to Dzulkefly Ahmad upon his re-appointment as health minister.
Malaysia’s general practitioner (GP) system of one-stop health care delivery by independent solo practitioners is the cheapest and one of the best around the region.
Indeed, a solo practitioner in his clinic is able to cater for the immediate medical and health care needs of thousands of patients within the community. This robust and cost-effective system has been shown to work and has increased the productivity of our workforce.
Back in 1986, a study by the Ministry of Health (MOH) has shown that the cost of a single consultation at a private GP clinic (RM28 per patient) is way below than that at a government clinic (RM56 per patient). This situation has remained the same, even after all these years.
In the past, private GPs, despite accounting for only 40 per cent of outpatient health care providers, were able see up to 60 per cent of the outpatient load.
Today, this has been severely affected by the phenomenon of middlemen, who use cumbersome micromanagement regulations and quasi regulations to restrict the quality and quantity of care that patients rightfully deserve. The GP system is in danger of being strangled.
Foreign-owned entities are also buying into primary care clinics. This is clearly contrary to earlier MOH policies, which stated that the GP sector should not be open to commercialisation. Costs will inevitably go up, and the quality of care will decrease.
The GP system is an efficient and cost-effective system to ease outpatient congestion, leaving public hospitals free to focus on secondary and tertiary care.
Sending patients to GPs near their home makes sense, and is economically the right solution, emulating what is being done is a neighbouring country.
Current reforms to the health care system should not end up deforming our existing GP system. Instead, it should nurture and strengthen the role of GPs in primary care.
Dr Steven Chow is a past president of the Federation of Private Medical Practitioners’ Associations Malaysia (FPMPAM) and the founding chairman of DRSforALL
- This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of CodeBlue.
