Our new Health Minister started his job with the utterance of his first agenda. The waiting time. It has long been infamously known that waiting times in hospitals and clinics nationwide are way too long ranging from an hour till 4 hours at some places. His predecessor has worked to alleviate this problem to no avail. The increasing patient load does not commensurate with the workforce in healthcare. Increasing patient expectations does not go in tandem with progress in the healthcare sector. Mind you, the long waiting time is not confined to Government centers but private ones as well although the problem is more acute in public hospitals and clinics.Why? How can our Health Minister tackle this problem?

There are no easy answers but one glaring problem is manpower management. The management of human resource especially in the healthcare sector is appaling. Doctors remain overworked, underpaid and under- appreciated. Top management personnel are not in touch with the ground staff. The different categories of healthcare staff remain fragmented and totally unsynchronised. The bottomline, lack of corporate culture, profesionalism and disiplin of the top management themselves. The very thing that they propagate, they themselves lack.

We need a good management team. We should not harbour those that have proven to be fruitless. We need a total revamp of the system. One example of a poor system is that of hiring foreign doctors. These doctors are paid higher than their Malaysian counterparts. They get to choose where they wish to serve. This despite having similar qualifications and on top of that, poor command of Bahasa Melayu and even English!!! Where on earth are foreigners treated better than locals themselves. We have been suckers all this while to accept such behaviour.

The system in Malaysia is like a funnel... Pour all that water and it comes out through one hole.. Yes... top managers will individually come up with a bright idea of a programme and implementation will be by only a few groundstaff. Top managers do not familiarise themselves with the actual environment that layworkers have to endure. Their occasional meteoric rise is questionable and riddled with suspicion.

What has all this got to do with waiting time? Well , that is the least of our problems. If we want to increase productivity, we need to motivate our healthcare staff. We need a good management that can allocate human resource in needed areas and can identify problematic areas effectively. Then will waiting time decrease accordingly. We can no longer sweep dust under the carpet and assume everything is all and well. Wake up!!!