KUALA LUMPUR, July 8 — Health Minister Dzulkefly Ahmad has openly admitted that patients can get faster access to elective procedures in government hospitals by paying for Rakan KKM services.
Dzulkefly explained yesterday that Rakan KKM, which he described as a “game changer”, will offer expedited elective services based on “excess capacity” in public hospitals, not emergency care that will remain equally accessible to everyone in the public health care system regardless of their socioeconomic background.
“For elective cases in hospitals, people have to wait long, reportedly six to seven months. If they want to get it faster, they go into our health care facilities [under Rakan KKM].
“But for emergencies, we’re all equal – B40, M40, or T20 are all the same. You have to queue up and you have to wait. But elective cases, you can go back and think – want to go private or want to go Rakan KKM?” Dzulkefly told a press conference yesterday after the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the Ministry of Health (MOH) and private hospital group IHH Healthcare Malaysia.
CodeBlue obtained an audio recording of Dzulkefly’s press conference.
The health minister also insisted that Rakan KKM was not “privatisation” of the public health care system, since the programme does not utilise private funding but is financed by government-linked investment companies (GLIC) instead that are investing in “good services, specialist care, personalised care”.
“I really get a bit very upset and depressed when people say that Rakan KKM is privatisation. It’s never like that. It’s not private money; it’s the government’s money. We want to provide specialist care for those who are willing to, elective cases who are willing to get their services or their procedures faster,” Dzulkefly said.
“Most importantly, we want to generate more income through our health care facilities, extra facilities of government, through our specialists because we want to, among other things, retain our specialists, pay them more. Pay our staff nurses more. Pay our medical assistants more. Pay the health care team more so that they don’t run away. We want to reduce the attrition rate.”
Dzulkefly also expects to generate revenue from Rakan KKM that can be channeled back into public health care facilities, “so it’s never like any privatisation.” He did not specify what kind of elective procedures will be offered by Rakan KKM.
According to Rakan KKM’s official website, Rakan KKM will be “priced above cost”. Based on the health minister’s comments yesterday, patients can essentially pay (either out-of-pocket or insurance if private insurers cover Rakan KKM) to skip the regular queue for elective procedures in government hospitals via Rakan KKM, even though the programme uses the “government’s money”.
Rakan KKM uses government facilities and health care professionals in the public service that are paid for by taxpayers, since the programme does not utilise its own separate building, beds, wards, operating theatres, or equipment purchased by GLIC investors, nor human resources that are hired outside the public sector.
Dzulkefly told Buletin TV3 in an interview last month that Cyberjaya Hospital and Putrajaya Hospital – both of which will be joining the Rakan KKM programme – have “ward branches and operating theatres that are often underused due to staff shortages. These are considered excess capacity.”
Sultan Idris Shah Serdang Hospital and the National Cancer Institute (IKN) are also slated to provide Rakan KKM services. Rakan KKM is expected to be launched in the third quarter of the year.
CodeBlue reported yesterday that the public health care sector faces an estimated shortage of 10,798 specialist doctors this year, due to the need for 17,393 specialists that exceeds the current number of 7,576 specialists, based on MOH data that took attrition rates into account when calculating the specialist deficit.
In the public health service, most specialties have less than half of the number of specialists needed, such as cardiothoracic surgery (18 per cent), oncology (31 per cent), general surgery (33 per cent), neurosurgery (38 per cent), and orthopaedic (49 per cent). Overall, the public sector only has 44 per cent of specialists needed.
The CEO of Rakan KKM is Dr Mohamed Ali Abu Bakar, former chief executive of the Malaysia Healthcare Travel Council (MHTC).
