MOH to announce healthcare financing reform plan - Dzulkefly

 

The Health Ministry will announce its plan for healthcare financing reform soon following its commitment to strengthening and improving the healthcare system across the country.

Minister Dzulkefly Ahmad said the reform agenda among others will focus on innovative and creative ways to spend the yearly government budget, thus supplementing the ministry’s financial standings for the betterment of the local healthcare system.

“...we were stranded because we are essentially a predominantly tax-based system and getting RM41.2 billion (budget) for this year and given RM6.07 billion for development expenditure. We were all along underfunded, understaffed and overworked.

“If you don’t allow me the resource, allow me to be resourceful and I will have innovative and creative ideas to ensure that we can spend and drive our expenditure in a creative way,” he said at the Avisena Specialist Hospital expansion groundbreaking ceremony in Shah Alam today.

He said as an upper middle-income country, the nation should spend six to seven percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) towards healthcare rather than the present 5.1 percent.

On that note, Dzulkefly applauded the private sector’s efforts to complement the public sector’s healthcare system while also urging the former to be involved in value-based healthcare.

“As an upper middle-income economy we must spend close to six to seven percent (of GDP) but of course, this minister is not able to ask and demand for more allocation because of our fiscal constraints. We look to the private sector to help us drive the health expenditure,” he said.

Dzulkefly said the ministry was also working on optimising the use of wards by offering daily patient treatment care at main hospitals and through the digitalisation of the Bed Management Unit to centralise the system through the Critical Patient Response Centre in hospitals.

He said the move was in line with the target of a hospital bed ratio of two beds to 1,000 residents by the end of the 12th Malaysia Plan to 2.06.

- Bernama