Auditor General’s report highlights some weaknesses in Full Paying Patient (FPP) scheme.

Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian National Medicines Policy has stated that hospitals cannot charge patients for unlisted medicines but the report revealed that Hospital Putrajaya, the pioneer of Full Paying Patient (FPP) scheme has unethically charged RM 89, 908 to 1682 patients in this scheme from 2015 to 2017 for unlisted medicines.

The deputy Director-General of Health, Dato’ Dr. Haji Azman Abu Bakar confirmed that the paperwork is being made as soon as possible for the full updated list of the medicines after getting the green light from the top management of Ministry of Health.

“After meeting with Deputy Secretary-General (Finance) on 3 July 2018, we will provide an official letter to these hospitals that offer Full Paying Patient scheme to warn them not to charge their patients for unlisted medicines,” he added.

The report however showed that the Pharmaceutical Services Division tried to come out with  solutions a couple of times to update the old fee records to enable them to charge the patients with the right amount but it failed due to the weaknesses in money collecting methods that have not being updated since 2007.

Auditor General’s report also stated that the lack in managing the fees for FPP scheme by Ministry of Health such as not updating the newest cost of medicines and still charging the patients with old price can lead to profit loss.

Some of the hospitals which did not follow the accounting method that has been set by the Ministry of Finance has caused some differences in the overall amount of the revenue collected from FPP scheme between hospitals.

The people working in pharmacies did not really check the receipt of the payment before giving the meds to the patients because there is clear instruction in the FPP guideline that says a patient should pay before seeing a doctor.

Late in processing financial claims, the FPP scheme has caused some delays in crediting the government’s revenue account and it could also lead to profit loss if the outcome and the revenue of FPP were not recorded and accounted properly since there were no monitoring and validation made towards the revenue account.

The report suggested that Ministry of Finance and Ministry of health to have a discussion to amend the Fees act 1951 to make sure the price they are charging people are the right and suitable on.

Inconsistent distribution of government profit to doctors and medical specialists shows that the government failed to reach the objective to encourage more specialists to keep working in government hospitals.

However, the overall distribution of revenue between the government and medical specialists for FPP is good at RM831, 667 according to the given ratio.

The lack in management jumped out when the report stated that the charge for FPP scheme for non-Malaysian is cheaper than the overall cost for public patient for non-Malaysian and it could also lead to profit loss by the government.

Hospital facilities and availability should be improved to cater the increasing demands from patients and right now, the Ministry of Health has only 4970 (59.8%) doctors and medical specialists for FPP and they need 3339 (40.2%)  more.

The Head of Corporate Communications for Ministry of Health Malaysia, Yamuna a/p Perimalu said that the ministry already working on updating the quota, facilities and all the prices to avoid any profit loss in the future

“The Ministry of Health is planning to give priorities to Malaysian citizens by providing more quota to them starting from next year instead of just 30% before to encourage more citizens to join this scheme,” she added.

Yamuna confirmed that Ministry of Health will come up with a better mechanism to measure and monitor the achievement of FPP through outcome and output.

Full Paying Patient (FPP) scheme is a private healthcare service offered through selected hospitals in Malaysia whereby patients need to bear the cost of treatment on their own by Ministry of Health highlighted some general weaknesses. 

Used to be one of the patients of this scheme, Nazurah Hassan shared on her blog that she was happy with everything that being offered under this scheme.

“The food, the services, the room, the nurses and doctors are the best and it made me feel like I was not in the hospital about to give birth for a moment because everything was wonderful,” wrote her.

A 23 year old student, Shamira Shaharudin said that she is very happy with Full Paying Patient scheme is offering because she gets to choose her favorite specialist just like private hospitals but with affordable price.