Let specialists move easily between public, private sectors, says APHM

The Malaysian Medical Association previously said public hospitals suffered from a shortage of nearly 11,000 medical specialists.KUALA LUMPUR: The Association of Private Hospitals of Malaysia (APHM) has called for greater mobility between the public and private healthcare sectors, saying this would help optimise specialist expertise across the country's healthcare system.APHM president Dr Kuljit Singh said Malaysia has many highly skilled healthcare professionals and that a framework allowing greater mobility between the public and private sectors would allow their expertise to be shared more effectively across the healthcare system."I hope this can happen so we can actually help both public and private sectors if our specialists can move seamlessly from one system to another," he said at the APHM International Healthcare Conference and Exhibition here today.However, he did not elaborate on what this framework would look like.The Malaysian Medical Association (MMA) previously said public hospitals were operating at maximum capacity and suffering from a shortage of nearly 11,000 medical specialists.MMA's section concerning house officers, medical officers and specialists also said a survey found that nearly one in four government specialists whose applications for sub-specialist training were rejected was considering leaving the public service.Separately, health minister Dzulkefly Ahmad said Malaysia must shift towards value-based healthcare, where success is measured by patient outcomes and experience rather than clinical output alone."Historically, healthcare models have often been driven by volume, essentially rewarding the sheer numbers of procedures performed, tests run and hospital beds filled."Moving from volume to value means we must stop measuring success merely by clinical output or hospital footfall and start grounding ourselves in what value really means," he said.Kuljit said the shift was necessary as Malaysia faces rising healthcare costs, an ageing population, increasing non-communicable diseases and the migration of healthcare professionals.