THE Health Ministry must not further delay referring non-Covid-19 patients to private hospitals for elective procedures, said the Association of Private Hospitals Malaysia (APHM).

APHM president Dr Kuljit Singh said this would reduce the burden of public hospitals, which are currently facing overwhelming cases of Covid-19 patients as infections surge nationwide. 

“We now hope that this referral will be carried out by the treating doctors in the public hospitals to the private hospitals without further delays as postponement of elective procedures have been extensively stretched due to the Covid-19 pandemic,” he said in a statement today. 

Kuljit said government hospitals could outsource the treatment of non-Covid-19 patients to private hospitals, which will take the cases on the condition that they are referred by a doctor in a public hospital and funded by the government.

“Treatment of non-Covid patients in private hospitals will be funded by the government based on the ministry’s circular but patients can only be referred by their treating doctors in the public hospitals to private based on the condition of the ailment,” Dr Kuljit said. 

He said the government hospitals had been slow to take up the offer from the private healthcare sector, which had seen only a small number of referrals.

Some of the cases referred were patients who had waited nearly a year for treatment, he said.

Director-general of health Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah recently said that elective procedures in hospitals in the Klang Valley would be reduced or postponed to free up hospital beds for the treatment of Covid-19 patients

Dr Kuljit said while private hospitals had limitations, they currently had the capacity to assist the government in handling non-Covid-19 cases. 

But while private hospitals still had capacity to treat non-Covid-19 patients, he also told The Malaysian Insight exclusively that the beds designated for Covid-19 patients were fully taken up.

There are 31 private hospitals in Klang Valley admitting Covid-19 patients, but the number of beds allocated for coronavirus care at each hospital is based on its individual capacity. – May 17, 2021.