KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 31 ― The government will include private medical general practitioners (GPs) to assist its health screening process for its upcoming B40 National Health Protection Scheme, said Dzulkefly Ahmad.
The health minister told Dewan Rakyat during Question Time that this is to avoid congestion at public medical facilities.
“It is important that we stress on primary care instead of curative care so it is important to have an early special health screening process for the B40. We need to find out if any B40 patients suffer from early stage of non-communicable diseases (NCD) before it becomes worse.
“For instance, we need to make sure hypertension won't worsen into a stroke as that will cost us more to treat.
“So we will include private clinics and GPs to lower the congestion at public hospitals and give them the chance to get involve in primary healthcare and strengthen the public and private partnership,” said Dzulkefly replying to Dr Kelvin Yii (PH-Bandar Kuching).
However, he said the government has not finalised the exact delivery mechanism to provide the free health service for the B40 group.
Dzulkefly said it could be a tweaked version of the Social Health Insurance, a hybrid system or something new altogether.
At the same time, he said the government is also looking at including the lower range of the M40 group into the system, but that is yet to be finalised.
The minister also stressed to Datuk Seri Adham Baba (BN-Tenggara) that the scheme has nothing to do with insurance or insurance firms.
“It is a form of health financing that comes from government revenue. It is a consolidated fund stemming from the taxes collected by the government. So it got nothing to do with insurance at all,” said Dzulkefly.
