AS reported in the media, general practitioners (GPs) are complaining about hard times and having to cope with burdensome and suffocating rules and regulations.
GPs played an important and crucial role in the early days after the country gained its independence and complemented the public healthcare system and healthcare services in the plantations. Private and specialist hospitals came into existence later.
GPs naturally moved to where they could get business. They could be found in urban, suburban and rural areas.
Whenever a new settlement or housing estate was developed, a mamak restaurant and a GP were among the first to move into the neighbourhood.
One must thank GPs for locating their clinics wherever they thought they could get business. Even though their charges were sometimes high, their services were appreciated in the early days as they were of assistance in Malaysia’s fledgling healthcare system.
The government needs to come up with a scheme to take care of the needs of GPs, considering their contributions to the community.
With a large number of doctors graduating annually from local and foreign universities, the government needs to ensure that the private GP system remains stable and viable. This is because many trainee doctors go into private practice after completing their housemanship at government hospitals.
As such the GP system needs to be properly maintained to ensure that young doctors can find their niches in the private sector.
Many GPs are complaining that business is poor and many have been forced to close their clinics.
The main reasons are the setting up of more and more pri vate hospitals, government hospitals and clinics, the spiralling cost of medicine and treatment, the increasing number of doctors that has led to intense competition and the concept of panel clinics.
The system of panel clinics has had a devastating effect on GPs. This is due to some companies appointing panel clinics on the basis of race or religion.
This discriminatory selection method means that the GP cake is now increasingly restricted to a small group of GPs
The Malaysian Medical Association should speak up against this unfair practice.
It is hoped that the Peduli Sihat health programme, which costs the Selangor government a few hundred million ringgit yearly, will be run impartially and appoint doctors of all racial and religious backgrounds.