The government may make it mandatory for private sector doctors to serve in government hospitals for a certain period of time yearly, Health Minister Dr Chua Soi Lek said today.

This was one way to alleviate the shortage of doctors in the public sector, he told a press conference today.

Chua said that before the mandatory rule is enforced, private sector doctors will be first invited to work voluntarily in government hospitals both as practitioners and trainers.

Depending on the response and feedback from private hospitals and their doctors, Chua said the ministry will then consider whether to make government service a mandatory condition for the renewal of medical practising certificates required by private practitioners.

"If the response is not good... we can make it a condition that they must perform a certain number of hours in the public sector before they can receive their practising certificates. I think it is time we tap these resources (in the private sector)," he said.

The details involving the period of time to be served and remuneration would be worked out later," the minister added.

Already in practice

Chua announced the proposal following a two-hour dialogue this morning with the Association of Private Hospitals of Malaysia (APHM) which oversees the interests of 101 private hospitals in the country.

APHM president Dr Ridzwan Bakar (photo right) said private hospital owners were amicable to the proposal of 'loaning' their doctors to the public sector.

"We have already started practising this. There are some private medical lecturers who continue to teach in the public sector a few hours a week," said Ridzwan, who is also Pantai Holdings chairperson.

The country currently has about 8,000 doctors in the private sector, equal to the number in the public service. But public sector doctors are under tremendous strain in coping with their increasing workload.

According to Chua, annual patient figures in the public sector totalled 48 million for outpatient services with 1.7 million in hospital admissions.

Outsourcing proposal

On his dialogue with APHM, Chua said they discussed measures to reduce the ministry's present capital expenditures.

He said APHB proposed that government hospitals outsource expensive clinical procedures such as radiotherapy for and MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scans - to the private hospitals and clinics.

Radiotherapy is used in the treatment of cancer while MRI scans are taken for holistic diagnoses of symptoms involving the brain and spinal cord.

"With outsourcing, we can save on capital expenditures. For example, one MRI scanner costs RM3.5 million, and it only lasts five years.

"The government owns five out of 24 such machines across the country. Radiotherapy units are also very expensive to set up, and the ministry only has two - one in Kuala Lumpur and another in Kuching," said Chua.

If the proposal to outsource government clinical services to private hospitals is adopted, Chua assured that patients would continue to be subsidised by the government.

"These are only initial proposals by APHB to outsource some of our clinical investigations ... but details have to be worked out," he said.

The minister pointed out that outsourcing of radiotherapy services had already been implemented partially across the country and at present, there are seven private medical centres in Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Melaka performing such services for government hospitals..

Also proposed was the outsourcing of the government's health sector human resource training - particularly for nurses - and for a more coordinated effort between the ministry and private sector to promote Malaysia as a 'health tourism' hub.

Health cutbacks

Last week, Chua said that his ministry had decided to hold back the construction of eleven new hospitals scheduled to begin this year as part of efforts to balance its budget.

He assured, however, that there would be no cut-back on essential services, staff salaries and training programmes, despite the massive cost-cutting of healthcare expenditure.

The finance ministry on Tuesday said the proposal to shelve the construction of 11 new hospitals originally scheduled under the Eighth Malaysia Plan was to give priority to other areas under health, such as training and upgrading of services.