KUALA LUMPUR, July 16 — Multiple patients or their family members have complained about waiting for up to eight hours at Miri Hospital’s emergency department for treatment.
Earlier today, a person posted on Threads about waiting for seven to eight hours at the Sarawak hospital’s emergency unit.
“Do we need to normalise such long waiting hours? What can we do as rakyat to help to improvise?”
Some said in response that hospital staff shouldn’t be blamed and that Malaysians should go to a public or private clinic if their condition wasn’t a real emergency.
Last Tuesday, a man complained about waiting seven to eight hours at Miri Hospital’s emergency department for his child to receive treatment for a broken little finger. His child had registered at around 7pm; a five-minute X-ray was performed at 12.25am, after which they awaited a doctor’s consultation.
X-ray results came out at 1.45am. Finally, at 2.01am, they were able to collect medication.
“Eight hours waiting like a beggar for a calling number,” he posted on Facebook. “The waiting period for calls was nine hours and 40 minutes; don’t tell me it’s one number in 10 hours.”
He added that he saw a woman who registered at 5pm for a fever and was waiting for eight hours because she still hadn’t been called. He also saw a one-year-old baby, also with a fever, who registered at 8am and still hadn’t been called by 1.48am.
In a subsequent Facebook post, the man stressed that he wasn’t blaming the attitudes or staff or doctors on duty.
“The delays and procedural constraints are, in fact, caused by the system itself and are unavoidable due to the shortage of doctors on the night shift,” he wrote.
“In my view, as a member of the public, this is not merely an issue of doctors’ salaries. It is about the substantial costs borne by the government to maintain very low registration fees and subsidise the cost of medicines.”
He suggested raising outpatient fees in government health care facilities from RM1 to RM5 or RM10.
Contrary to popular belief, user fees contribute very little revenue to the Ministry of Health (MOH) that is primarily funded by allocations from the federal government’s annual budgets taken from the consolidated fund.
In 2021, MOH collected a total revenue of just RM1.2 billion from both Malaysians and non-Malaysians in medical fees, comprising only 1 per cent of the ministry’s expenditure.
MOH received RM46.5 billion for its 2026 budget.
Last June 20, at night, another person complained in a Facebook group about waiting six to seven hours for treatment at Miri Hospital.
“Where are all the doctors?” the person wrote. “Totally unprofessional. You doctors (Miri Hospital) need to be more focused on treating patients because you are not doing it for free.”
A doctor at Miri Hospital told CodeBlue that waiting times in the green zone of the emergency department for non-critical cases ranged from 280 to 400 minutes, or four hours and 40 minutes to six hours and 40 minutes. These waiting periods are average.
On a particular night, with a 280-minute wait for stable patients in the green zone, there was only one medical officer on duty. So 20 minutes set for a consultation is equivalent to 14 patients waiting at the same time.
“Due to shortage of manpower, emergency green zone is left with no doctor in charge occasionally,” she said.
The doctor added that waiting times in the emergency department were sometimes as long as 10 hours.
“Issue raised to highest authority for month and year, but seems like nobody cares.”
CodeBlue reported yesterday that the MOH’s doctor workforce contracted for the first time in more than a decade in 2024, losing 1,444 doctors (2.7 per cent) from 53,512 in 2023 to 52,068 in 2024.
