The Association of Private Hospitals Malaysia (APHM) urges the Minister of Finance and the government to allocate a special budget to the existing temporary budget, which will benefit public hospital patients who can be treated in private hospitals.

There is a special budget which is currently utilised to outsource services at private hospitals for non-Covid-19 patients who have been waiting for treatment.

Our proposal is to extend the budget beyond December 2020 into 2021 and to increase the quantum. We believe this partnership will be sustainable as there is enough of capacity and resources in private hospitals to assist patients from the public hospitals to be treated earlier.

The Ministry of Health has specific guidelines on outsourcing services which has benefitted patients in 2020. The amount spent on patients treated in private hospitals would be far cheaper than building new facilities in the Ministry of Health.

We would propose that the savings from this can be channeled to further manage the Covid-19 pandemic in the country, as the private hospitals with this budget will be able to lessen the clinical burden of the public hospitals.

• This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of CodeBlue.