AN assessment centre will be formed as part of the integration of private and public health resources primarily to manage and monitor Covid-19 patients, director general of health Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said today.

Noor Hisham said the ministry was hoping to set up the centre as early as next week.

He said discussions were ongoing between the public and private health sectors to ensure there was smooth co-ordination in managing Covid-19 cases.

The ministry and private hospitals will meet for the third time this Saturday to iron out the details.

The centre will be used to determine whether a patient can be monitored at home, sent to a hospital, or to a low-risk quarantine or treatment centre based on risk assessment.

Aside from Covid-19, the one stop centre will also look into integration of resources for haemodialysis cases, which is mostly treated at private healthcare facilities.

“We hope that when we set up the Covid-19 assessment centre, there will be some groups of patients that can be managed at the private sector, for example expatriates and staff from the embassy,” he said.

He said currently expatriates were sent to Universiti Malaya Medical Centre and UKM Medical Centre, and both hospitals were already reaching their full capacity.

With this integration, these patients can be sent to designated private hospitals that have the capacity to treat them.

He added that some private hospitals were already managing Covid-19 patients.

The ministry was also aiming to step up its Covid-19 testing capacity to up to 150,000 tests a day.

Currently, there are 68 labs that can process up to 70,000 RT-PCR samples.

To achieve the target, Noor Hisham said the ministry will have to increase manpower by training more people and setting up more laboratories.

“We encourage those from the private sector to come in to increase the capacity,” he said at the weekly press conference today.

“We need to maximise the facilities at the private and public sectors (and) work together as one,” he added.

Noor Hisham said the ministry will conduct training for both public and private healthcare staff on infection control.

He added that the collaboration goes beyond just integration of facilities to include manpower.

He said the Emergency Ordinance has overridden the Annual Practicing Certificate, which meant health workers can be mobilised to and from public and private sectors or from one hospital to another when there was a need.

“That helps us to enhance and maximise the resources we have between public and private sector, working together as one because we have a common enemy which is Covid-19,” he said.

Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin announced recently that moving patients to private hospitals will reduce the pressure on public hospitals and public healthcare workers.

In declaring a state of emergency on January 12, Muhyiddin said the private healthcare sector can be co-opted in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.

“In this context, some of the emergency ordinances can cover issues such as the use of private hospitals, temporary takeover of land, buildings and other properties owned by private hospitals or request the use of private hospital resources to treat Covid-19 patients,” he said in his national address.

This would enable the government to get more inclusive involvement from the private sector, including its faculties, to lighten the load undertaken by the government, particularly public hospitals. – January 21, 2021.