IJN refutes ‘costliest specialist centre’ label

The private health institution says its charges have not skyrocketed and its patients not treated according to status.

PETALING JAYA: The National Heart Institute (IJN) has shot down allegations by a health activist that its corporatisation has led to the poor being sidelined.

A spokesman for the Citizens Healthcare Coalition (CHC), Dr T Jayabalan, had used IJN as an example of the perils of privatising healthcare under the proposed 1Care healthcare system.

Jayabalan claimed that IJN’s corporatisation made it the country’s costliest specialists centre where the poor have to wait about two years for treatment while the rich are allowed to schedule overnight surgeries.

In a statement to FMT today, IJN CEO, Dr Robaayah Zambahari, said that despite its corporatisation 20 years ago IJN’s fees have remained capped by the government since the last approved revision in 2003.

She also pointed out that while IJN is restricted from increasing charges in line with current market rates, it has still managed to provide services to more than two million people since its inception.

According to Robaayah, IJN has attended to over one million outpatients, 134,492 inpatients, performed 89,136 invasive procedures and 33,530 surgeries between 2001 and 2007.

“Our patients are of various creeds, ideologies and nationalities,” she said. “We can’t achieve what we have achieved if we are the costliest specialist centre in the country.”

Robaayah also said that patients are treated based on the availability of beds and not their status.

Financial constraints
“(For emergency cases), it is not uncommon for us to immediately rush patients to undergo emergency procedures,” she said.

“For patients of non-emergency status the waiting list seen in the outpatient clinic now stands at about 10 days.

“The waiting list for an emergency procedure ranges from a day to two months, depending on the urgency of the case.”

She said given that IJN patients’ backgrounds are heterogeneous, it was natural to have segments of patients who could afford the treatments.

As such, the govermment has set up a mechanism within the IJN infrastructure to address the concerns of those with financial constraints.

“We hope that these facts will help Jayabalan correct his assumptions,” Robaayah said.

“While he may be playing to his audience, there is really no need for him to paint IJN black to make his cause appear white.”