Duties of hospitals, uni hospitals to be coordinated - Maszlee

PARLIAMENT | Discussions over the coordination between public hospitals and university teaching hospitals are ongoing, according to Education Minister Maszlee Malik.

Maszlee said these discussions are to ensure that the quality of medical services to the community and the teaching and learning sessions for university hospitals would not be affected, and that there would be no overlapping of duties between the two.

“Public hospitals, under the purview of Health Ministry, have the main role of providing services to the people, compared to university teaching hospitals, which have a core role of training and teaching to doctors to enhance their expertise while not neglecting medical research,” he told the Dewan Rakyat today.

Maszlee was replying to a supplementary question from Fahmi Fadzil (Harapan-Lembah Pantai) who wanted to know whether the government could implement an initiative to ensure a balance between university teaching hospitals' main role to provide clinical training to future healthcare professionals, and delivering medical services to the community.

The minister explained that university teaching hospitals were established under the university’s constitution and subject to the approval of the university board of directors, whereas the public hospitals were under purview of Health Ministry.

He said his ministry also wanted to see more public hospitals built to accommodate the increasing number of patients seeking treatments at university hospitals.

- Bernama