KUALA LUMPUR, June 22 ― Local general practitioners are facing a sunset industry as more clinics close down due to financial troubles, the Malaysian Medical Association (MMA) said.
Its president Dr Ravindran R. Naidu noted an estimated amount of 500 clinics had shuttered between 2014 and 2016 as shown in the recently released Study on the Health Economics of General Practitioners in Malaysia: Trends, Challenges and Moving Forward in 2016, reported by The Star on its website.
“With the drop in number of patients and increasing cost, it will eventually lead to the natural death of the GP practice,” Dr Ravindran was quoted saying.
According to the report, the study that involved 1,800 GPs, revealed that nearly 70 per cent of clinics attended to less than 30 patients a day and noted that increased expenses for clinics were due to changes in policies and the involvement of unregulated third-party administrators (TPAs).
This posed as a challenge for GPs, as the typical operating cost for clinics in urban areas costs between RM50,000 to RM60,000 a month.
Dr Ravindran was reported blaming the TPAs over the matter, claiming they would negotiate with companies to shift patients from one clinic to another and charge GPs a fee for every patient they see while also restricting certain prescribed medication and consultation fee.
He was also reported faulting an oversupply of doctors and the introduction of a contract system for GPs in the public service for the decline of GP practices.
He reiterated his call for the government to either trim its intake of medical students, noting that there are 5,000 medical graduates annually; or build more hospitals.
Last month, Health Ministry deputy director-general Datuk Dr S. Jeyaindran said that the government can take in up to 5,300 housemen at government facilities nationwide.
Dr Jeyaindran said that local university graduates wait an average of three months for their respective postings while medical graduates from foreign universities have to wait longer without giving an indication of how long.
However, members of the medical fraternity have contested Dr Jeyaindran’s assertions, arguing that the wait for postings to be much longer than stated.
