Empowering the voice of the doctor and his patient


 

FOR many years, the rights of the doctor and his patients have been slowly but surely eroded by the big business of medicine. The many new laws and regulations are stifling the practice, the art and the humanity of our work. The MCOs, TPPs and their likes in the business of medicine with their single-minded pursuit of profit have changed the landscape. 

Their SOPs, GLs, membership cards, exclusion clauses, pre-approval before treatment, unilateral denial of payment for honest work done and the many other administrative hurdles are creating major divide between the good doctor and his patient. 

Today, it makes good sense to be in the largely under-regulated business of medicine rather than to be the practitioner in the over-regulated practice of medicine. For the patient, costs have escalated but choice and access to care have gone the other way. 

In these times, doctors and their patients find themselves swept aside by this unstoppable tide of change. There is a sense of helplessness in the fraternity. Is there nothing that we, the doctor in the house, can do? Certainly not.

2018 is the year to empower the voice of the doctor and his patient. We need not remain silent.

The voice of one doctor is stronger than what many may think. Each doctor seeing a mere 35 patients daily works up to almost a 1,000 patient-doctor encounters per month. There is easily more than 10,000 of us in the private sector. In a year, we are talking about hundreds of million if not a billion of one-to-one opportunities to express our concerns for our patients’ welfare and help guide public opinion.

It is time for doctors and their patients to empower themselves with this voice. If we see something that is not right, let’s whisper, talk and engage with our patients. They are the people that matter in present and future healthcare policies. 

It is time to support the call for a Royal Commission on Healthcare in Malaysia that was recently proposed at the Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra Oration, Ministry of Health/Academy of Medicine Malaysia Congress 2017. The distinguished orator, Dr Yeoh Poh Hong, was certainly not wrong when he presented the facts and figures (ironically sourced from MOH studies themself) to support the call for the a Royal Commission for the objective to seek holistic solutions for the future of Malaysian healthcare.

Healthcare is a basic right of the rakyat and not a commodity to be bought and sold in the normal market place. Healthcare policies and decisions must encompass the views of the doctor and their patients and not just those dressed in business suits secretly huddled around financial spreadsheets in corporate boardrooms around the country.

The Federation urges all doctors to take time and engage your patients so that they can engage others and create an environment of transparency in our future healthcare policy. – December 31, 2017.

*Dr Steven Chow has served in the Federation of Private Medical Practioners’ Associations, Malaysia (FPMPAM) since 2000 and is currently its president. 
 


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