KUALA LUMPUR, June 5 — The Johor state health department (JKNJ) is reviewing services at Segamat Hospital’s obstetrics and gynaecology (O&G) department, amid the hospital’s plans to close the O&G specialist clinic.
Johor state health director Dr Mohtar Pungut@Ahmad said JKNJ’s review of the district hospital’s O&G services was aimed at ensuring effective and continuous service delivery for the community.
“The latest status and further plans about this issue will be informed in the nearest time,” he said in a statement yesterday.
Dr Mohtar also denied separate claims that the entire Segamat Hospital would be closed on July 1.
The Segamat Hospital director reportedly wrote in a June 3 memo, which was posted online, that the hospital’s O&G specialist clinic would be completely closed on July 1 until a date to be announced later, “following a worsening manpower shortage crisis”.
The memo notified the suspension of stable or elective O&G referrals from Rompin, Pahang, and Gemas, Negeri Sembilan, to Segamat Hospital’s O&G department, effective from last June 1 until further notice.
“The O&G department at Segamat Hospital is currently facing a very critical staff shortage involving medical officers. This situation has affected the department’s optimal capacity to manage referral cases and provide health care services to obstetric & gynaecology patients,” said the Segamat Hospital director.
Yesterday, contract doctors’ group Hartal Doktor Kontrak (HDK) posted a person’s social media post asking for patients not to be added to Segamat Hospital’s medical outpatient department (MOPD).
The photo showed a board stating that there were only two specialist doctors, one doctor, and 121 patients at a specialist clinic on June 3.
Dr Mohtar’s statement did not address the MOPD post.
CodeBlue published a medical officer’s (MO) letter to the editor last March about an imbalanced medical officer distribution between Segamat Hospital and surrounding public health clinics that was putting pressure on the hospital’s emergency department that only had 13 MOs then.
Given the social media posts yesterday, it appears that the staff shortage at Segamat Hospital has worsened beyond the emergency unit to the O&G department and MOPD.
