Local healthcare industry players may need to look at the possibility of increasing their employees’ salaries in a bid to prevent brain drain.

Pantai Holdings Bhd chief executive officer, Ahmad Shahizam Mohd Shariff said the global demand for good quality human capital in the healthcare industry is increasing currently.

However, with the much higher salaries offered by hospitals overseas, he said most of the local talents had opted to migrate.

“The reality is that we have a very good system where we are still able to train and establish what we call high-class healthcare professionals... not just doctors but also nurses and other healthcare workers.

“The issue is when there is a global market place, the same skills (objectively measured) requirement but at different level of income or salary is a factor that will determine where the manpower shortages are,” he told Bernama.

Citing an example, Ahmad Shahizam said junior nurses in a local private or government hospital earned a salary of around RM3,000-RM4,000 on average, while in foreign countries, they command a salary of almost two to three times higher.

“There are a lot of international industry players who are actually looking to have someone like them in their country because they don’t have the resources.

“The income level overseas is much higher compared with that in Malaysia. In West Asian countries, their income are tax free. That creates a problem for us because we keep losing workers to them,” he said.

The Muslim Doctors Association of Malaysia (Perdim) president, Dr Ahmad Shukri Ismail, concurred with this view, lamenting the concern on the lack of manpower in the healthcare industry.

“Certainly, we are facing the problem of skilled manpower shortage for nurses as they get better opportunities in West Asian countries particularly Saudi Arabia and Oman.

“A similar problem arises in the case of specialist doctors especially in the east coast as there is a perception that the region offers less potential,” he said.

Even though offered with more lucrative income, Dr Ahmad Shukri said it came with greater responsibility as the awareness and knowledge of patients in those countries were higher, amid the apparent cultural differences.

‘Healthcare industry is actually a service’

Admitting that it is impossible for the local industry to match the salary straight away, Ahmad Shahizam said the players, however, could start to reflect on the fact that the healthcare industry is actually a service.

“We must continuously reflect the current cost (of the industry) of the global market price. We cannot match straight away, but we have to make sure that we reflect on that standard every year. Healthcare costs will actually go up.

“One of the main factors that have been pushing up costs is not so much about equipment or building hospitals. Yes... they are a part of it, but the largest cost in terms of running a hospital is staff costs,” he said.

At the current salary level, he said the local industry was still losing workers as they get better opportunities elsewhere.

The local healthcare industry expenditure stood at US$11.73 billion (US$1=RM3.917) last year. This was expected to increase to US$20 billion by 2020, driven by the rise of chronic diseases and increasing cost of urbanisation, among others.

Ahmad Shahizam also stressed on the quality of training centres in producing international level nurses.

“Unfortunately, we see too many colleges have been set up without the proper ability to train nurses.

“Suddenly, there are a lot of nurses who are qualified but they are not able to do the job. It is not fair to the nursing (profession) generally because actually nursing is not an easy job,” he said.

- Bernama