Health director: No ‘runners’ appointed for Full Paying Patient Services at S’wak Heart Centre

KUCHING (Aug 15): The Sarawak Heart Centre (SHC) does not appoint any party to act as a ‘runner’ in obtaining the Full Paying Patient Services (FPP), said State Health director Dr Veronica Lugah.

She said FPP can be obtained through a referral from a registered medical practitioner (government or private), or self-referral.

“Patients can obtain an appointment date from the relevant clinic either by phone or by attending the clinic in person. Appointments can be scheduled on the same day if there is a vacancy.

“However, this service does not affect the turn of other public patients because FPP cases will see the specialist after the consultation of public patients who have an appointment that day is completed first.

“Procedures involving FPP cases are also mostly conducted outside office hours or during weekends,” she said in a statement.

She was responding to a viral social media post which claimed that there has been a misconduct of medical officers, nurses, and runners at SHC who profited from patients.

Dr Veronica said SHC is a public hospital which offers FPP where the implementation of this service is subjected to the Fee (Medical) (Full Paying Patient Service) Order.

“FPP is medical treatment service provided by medical institutions to patients where patients can choose a specialist medical officer to treat them as well as a queue facility to receive the treatment.

“Through FPP, patients will be charged the full fees without government subsidies to obtain medical treatment services from specialist medical officers at government hospitals.

“Fees will be charged for each service including registration fees, consultation fees, investigation fees, consumable and disposable goods fees and so on,” she said.

She added that payment for FPP must be made at any payment counter as specified by the hospital and that an official payment receipt will be issued after all payments have been made.

She said the Ministry of Health is aware of the viral social media post and takes serious note of the issue.

“The Sarawak State Health Department assures that further investigations will be carried out to determine if there is indeed a misconduct by staff and will further take note of matters that should be taken action upon to improve the quality of services at the hospital.

“We would also like to remind the public obtain information and hospital services through the right channels,” she said.