KUALA LUMPUR, April 28 — A video by the Domestic Trade and Cost of Living Ministry (KPDN) on enforcement over price display at a car service workshop has raised the ire of private general practitioners (GPs).
KPDN Perak posted a video titled “KPDN Perak Sound Bengkel” on its TikTok channel last Wednesday, depicting how enforcement officers issued a compound under the Price Control and Anti-Profiteering Act 2011 (Act 723) against a car service workshop in Teluk Intan for failing to display the prices of its products.
KPDN officers also took issue with the tiny font size of a price list in the workshop. The video, which has received over 344,000 views, features funny tropes, including one of the chain-smoking, hair-rollered Landlady of Pig Sty Alley from Kung Fu Hustle with a cigarette in her lips.
“That video is making its rounds in GP chat groups and causing disdain among medical practitioners,” Federation of Private Medical Practitioners’ Associations, Malaysia (FPMPAM) president Dr Shanmuganathan TV Ganeson told CodeBlue.
“So far, there is no news of gazettement [of the drug price display order]. So we have advised no display until then. If they do gazette it, we will advise accordingly.
“Putting up the display is the least of our problems…the implications of KPDN encroaching on the sanctity of medical professionalism is.
“Just imagine KPDN behaving like in this video, in GP and specialist clinics, during operating hours.”
KPDN has yet to announce the gazettement of the drug price display order under Act 723 for private GP clinics and hospitals, as well as community pharmacies, three days before the May 1 target date for enforcement this Thursday.
Even though the medicine price display mandate is legally under KPDN’s jurisdiction, CodeBlue understands that the Ministry of Health (MOH) will hold a press conference on the matter on May 1.
Doctors’ groups have widely opposed KPDN’s jurisdiction over drug price display, saying that the medical profession should remain under the MOH’s purview, while maintaining support for price transparency.
‘Cloud Hanging Over Our Heads With KPDN’
Former Malaysian Medical Association (MMA) president Dr Mohamad Namazie Md Ibrahim said during a panel discussion on medicine price display at the MMA Selangor’s Healthcare Conference in Bandar Utama, Petaling Jaya, yesterday that the medicine price display would be a “great problem”, especially for solo GP practitioners.
“There’s a cloud hanging over their heads with KPDN that has now been empowered to take action. They are the ones who are now going to do the inspection, not CKAPS (Private Medical Practice Control Section, Ministry of Health),” he said.
Dr Namazie claimed that his relatives who are in the retail or restaurant business have alleged corruption among KPDN enforcement officers.
“And let me be vocal about this: as far as health care has been concerned, except for one department, the other departments have not been too harsh on the medical profession. The one department, I won’t say – the GPs would know. But now with another ministry coming in, we’re going to have problems.”
Dr Namazie claimed that as drug prices “keep changing all the time”, more staff now need to be hired to maintain the database for medicine price displays.
“And then what else? You need to have a display system. And if you look at the regulations on this price display put up by KPDN, it’s very clear how you should display – they are dictating how you should display – laptop, tablet, catalog, or a screen, but you’re not allowed to do a running banner and all that. It’s specifically stated in the regulations.
“So now, you need to have staff to look at your database and keep updating it, which means it’s going to increase your cost of running a practice. And the government has tied you with fixed regulated (doctors’) fees.”
‘Looks Like They Want Solo GP Proprietors To Close Shop’
A doctor attending the MMA Selangor conference expressed feelings of prosecution among GPs with medicine price displays.
“When I was in practice, we had the health inspector coming in, saying he’s got a spot check. Then we had the income tax people coming in and sitting outside, and they tell you – you know, my husband is an accountant – for you to take their suggestions,” said the audience member.
“Then we had Fomema coming in to check your records, they have a right. Then we had the pharmacists coming in to check your drugs and whether the columns are right. If the columns are wrong, you’re given a warning.
“I think this idea of displaying prices – why don’t the pharmacists have to display prices?
“So you see, it’s always been working against the GPs. Now, with the price displays, it looks like they want solo GP proprietors to close shop. A lot of them have already closed up. They’re giving up.
“The group practices will survive because they’ve got businessmen coming in. Group practices will flourish after this, when they put the insurance scheme in and the cronies will get the contracts. I feel that’s the case, having been a practitioner for 40 years and seeing the trend.”
PSM Chair: GPs Are An Endangered Species
Dr Michael Jeyakumar Devaraj, Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM) chairman and consultant respiratory physician at KMC Medical Centre, Ipoh, described GPs as an “endangered species” in Malaysia.
“Not only you have the MCOs (managed care organisations) coming in – and MCOs are carnivores in my categorisation, they can be quite controlling – you also have private hospitals and they act like GP clinics where people can just walk in and see the specialists,” he told the MMA Selangor conference.
“I think the way forward is something like the [UK] NHS where GPs become a part of the whole national health care service because if we look at Malaysia right now, our NCDs (non-communicable diseases) are not being treated well. I think one of the problems is they (patients) see different people at different times. There is no continuation.
“Are we doing the retinas, for example, on time? Are we checking the HbA1c at a particular time? Are we looking at the feet? If that is personalised, I think diabetes will see much less complications.
“So the idea of assigning them to particular GPs, and the government paying the GPs would overcome a large part of the problem.
“You get a set of patients that GPs will follow up on, and you look at the number of diabetics, the number of people with hypertension, asthma, and gout. I think we already have what, about eight million people? Ten million people already have one of these, and you have about 8,000 GPs, right? You send them to follow up to the GPs and the government pays for their consultation. So those are the kinds of things we can work out in consultation.”
