Dzulkefly outlines 6 measures for better health services

Health minister says the effort includes increasing hospital capacity, improving day-care services and intensifying collaborations with universities.

Health minister Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad says the government wants to ensure the people receive the best healthcare. (Bernama pic)

KUALA LUMPUR: The health ministry will implement six measures to address various issues related to health services and facilities to ensure that people receive the best care, said Health Minister Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad.

He said the first measure was to raise the capacity of public hospitals by building new facilities and at the same time upgrading the existing ones.

In 2010, there were 137 hospitals and medical institutions under the ministry and the number had increased to 145 hospitals in 2016.

“The second measure is to improve day-care services in hospitals to reduce congestion in in-patient admissions and waiting time for treatment.

“To realise this goal the ministry has built nine day-care centres that provide similar facilities and medicines,” he said in an interview with Bernama.

Dzulkefly said another step was to have more collaboration between government hospitals and universities.

“As of now, 22 public hospitals have collaborated with local universities.

“The result of these collaborations has made the public hospital a training centre for medical specialists and students from the universities.

“Some examples of the collaborations are between Tapah Hospital in Perak and Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, and Tanjung Karang Hospital in Selangor with MAHSA University,” he said.

Dzulkefly said the fourth measure was to have an appointment system for patients to see doctors, which would also reduce waiting time and congestion at the clinics.

“The fifth measure is to forge cluster-hospital collaboration between specialist hospitals and non-specialist hospitals to increase access to specialised services to people in rural areas.

“Among the government hospitals involved in this collaboration are Melaka Hospital, Jasin Hospital and Alor Gajah Hospital,” he said.

Dzulkefly said the sixth measure was to improve the efficiency in handling patients’ waiting process to reduce the long waiting time for patients.

He said such measures could improve the quality of services at government hospitals in the future. -FMT