KUALA LUMPUR: Covid-19 patients referred to private healthcare facilities will have to meet certain requirements before they are allowed admittance at private hospitals.
Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said the ministry is well-informed of the capacity and capability of the private healthcare sector in terms of managing Covid-19 and non-Covid-19 patients.
He said government hospitals would only refer Covid-19 patients who meet a specific criteria - such as ambassadors, expatriates and patients who requested to be admitted at private facilities - to private hospitals.
Besides this, he said non-Covid patients would be referred to private hospitals to free up spaces at government facilities to attend to severe Covid-19 cases.
These, he said, would ensure smooth and efficient management of patients at both public and private hospitals.
Dr Noor Hisham said this was among the matters discussed during a virtual engagement held this afternoon between the health ministry and the private healthcare sector to discuss public-private health services integration in managing Covid-19 patients in Malaysia.
"It is a coordination meeting (with the relevant stakeholders where presentations and discussions were held) to address all issues and challenges (in managing this pandemic)," he told the New Straits Times.
Issues discussed, he said, concerned implementation of the Covid-19 Assessment Centre (CAC); Unified Command Centre (UCC), and updates on the government's MySejahtera application features.
Additionally, the ministry has also called on private healthcare operators to manage their own Covid-19 patients instead of referring them to government hospitals.
"We will refer non-Covid cases to private hospitals. They (private sector) can continue to manage their private patients diagnosed with Covid-19.
"Thirdly, we will only refer those patients who fits the criteria like ambassadors, expatriates and those who can afford and want to be managed in private hospitals."
The virtual engagement meeting deliberated more on the implementation issues not on policies, Dr Noor Hisham informed.
"Those (issues of management of Covid-19 and non-Covid-19 patients) are the low hanging fruits, but we discussed the CAC and UCC for better coordination in both sectors.
"During the engagement, we presented updates on MySejahtera's features such as self-reporting for Covid-19 positive cases and home patient management; CAC; and UCC."
Dr Noor Hisham said there were 596 attendees representing various medical associations, group and stand-alone private hospitals, Bank Negara Malaysia, MoH headquarters' Senior Officials, State Health Directors, National Crisis Preparedness and Response Centre (CPRC) and Hospital Services CPRC.
The medical associations involved were the Association of Private Hospitals Malaysia, Malaysian Medical Association, Malaysian Muslim Doctors Organisation, Federation of Private Medical Practitioners' Associations Malaysia, Islamic Medical Association Malaysia, and Medical Practitioners Coalition Association of Malaysia.
He said CAC is a centre established in each District Health Office to assess patients' severity and identify suitability for home monitoring.
While UCC, he said, is a functional organisation which oversees and coordinates all the efforts related to the clinical management of Covid-19 patients within a particular area and will integrate the private healthcare facilities.
"The participation of each healthcare stakeholder is vital to ensure that our efforts are translated into success.
"As stressed before, we must work together as one – the public and private partnership must be further enhanced, and we must continue to find ways to collaborate further.
"Regardless of whether we are from the public or private sector; our contribution is equally important. We must work as a team.
"We are all soldiers in this long and tough battle and the nation is depending on us to help overcome this pandemic," he added.
Meanwhile, Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Adham Baba questioned the private sector for raising concerns over accepting Covid-19 patients from government hospitals.
"We have been outsourcing non-Covid-19 cases to private hospitals since the second wave. There is no issue here.
"Now we are also asking them to take in and manage their own Covid-19 patients. Why must they refuse?"
He was responding to calls by private healthcare centres to transfer only non-Covid-19 patients to their facilities to free up public hospitals to cope with the escalating Covid-19 admissions in the country.
Association of Private Hospitals Malaysia (APHM) president Datuk Dr Kuljit Singh had said this should be done instead of sending Covid-19 patients — low or high-risk — to private healthcare centres.
He said not all private hospitals had the capacity and capability to treat and manage Covid-19 cases, such as the manpower and facilities in Intensive Care Units (ICU).
Dr Kuljit further said while private hospitals were preparing to accept and treat their own patients who tested positive for Covid-19, the first step would always be to refer patients to public hospitals.