THE Malaysian Medical Association (MMA) has expressed concern over the distribution of manpower across public healthcare facilities, including hospitals and health clinics.

In a recent ad hoc poll conducted by MMA SCHOMOS, it was found that only 5% of public healthcare facilities have adequate manpower while nearly half of the respondents say that shortages are due to doctors quitting or being transferred.

“We urge the Health Ministry (MOH) to conduct a comprehensive study with transparent publication of results on the public healthcare manpower and workload to tackle the issue of manpower shortages and hope that these findings from our survey will further shed light on the situation at public healthcare facilities,” said MMA president Dr Azizan Abdul Aziz in a statement on Monday (May 27).

MMA’s Section Concerning House Officers Medical Officers and Specialists (SCHOMOS) manpower ad hoc poll was conducted online via Google Forms in early April to obtain a quick overview of the current status of manpower distribution in government facilities.

The survey received a total of 117 responses from various government healthcare facilities across the country.

Participants in the survey were from Johor (14), Kedah (13), Kuala Lumpur (7), Negeri Sembilan (9), Pahang (4), Penang (9), Perak (10), Perlis (1), Sabah (20), Sarawak (19), Selangor (9) and Terengganu (2).

According to the poll results, only 6 responses (5%) indicated that they had adequate manpower, whilst 36 responses (32%) needed an increase of up to 50% of manpower and 51 (46%) needed an increase of up to 100%.

18 responses (16%) needed more than twice the current number of doctors to provide adequate services. There were 6 responses who were “unsure” as to how many doctors they actually needed.

On the reasons for lack of manpower, nearly half (48.3%) of the 117 respondents in the ad hoc poll stated that doctors were quitting/transferring, 34 (28.8%) was because of doctors quitting and only 16 (13.6%) was due to transferring only.

Here, quitting means resignation from the service, whereas transferring means the doctors were transferred to another facility due to specialisation training or other factors.

“We believe one of the main reasons for this lack of manpower is brain drain. There is a sudden increase of doctors resigning and not accepting permanent posts,” Dr Azizan said.

“The quitting of doctors does not come as a surprise and has been brought up repeatedly, most recently by Senator Dr RA Lingeswaran who said a total of 3,046 contract doctors resigned in the last three years according to the MOH.”

In the MMA SCHOMOS ad hoc poll, 51 (43.6%) of responses also stated that there was some form of facility or equipment failure, thus contributing to the hurdles faced in providing optimal patient care at their facility.

A combination of reduced number of doctors with infrastructure failure indicates that there are difficulties in providing good quality healthcare to the people.

To effectively tackle these issues, the MMA proposed, among others, a transparent dashboard with the numbers of healthcare workers in the system.

“We again reinforce the importance of having transparent data readily available for public reference. The human resource unit of the MOH needs to take this seriously as only with proper data can we establish the true extent of the shortages,” Dr Azizan remarked.

“We did it for COVID-19 data, we don’t see why the same can’t be done for our public healthcare human resources.”

In terms of remuneration, Dr Azizan underscores the drafting of fresh salary terms in line with the rising of civil servants’ salaries to be competitive with private practitioners for all healthcare workers.

“We welcome the announcement that civil servants’ salaries will be increased by more than 13% starting December this year and await news on the new on-call rates,” she added.

Meanwhile, Dr Azizan cited a group of doctors whose contracts are ending this month and in July with no concrete answer as to what will happen to them.

“Shouldn’t we be training them to help curb the drastic lack of manpower we are currently facing?” she questioned.

She also reiterated the importance of repairing broken facilities and replacing spoiled equipment, adding that more effort is needed in this area, and again to ensure that resources are not all spent in the urban areas as rural Malaysians deserve equal quality care as well.

“We urge the government to take these issues seriously before the healthcare system suffers any further. The Public Service Department (PSD), Finance Ministry (MOF) and the MOH need to work closely with all stakeholders to stop the situation from further deteriorating,” said Dr Azizan.

“In the long term, we need a Public Service Commission that can manage the healthcare system separate from the current MOH-PSD-MOF trinity to allow for more flexible decision-making when it comes to staffing and service expansion needs.” - May 27, 2024

https://focusmalaysia.my/mma-schomos-poll-only-5-public-healthcare-facilities-have-adequate-manpower/