Private health and social sector growing by leaps and bounds

PETALING JAYA: Malaysia’s private healthcare and social work services sector has been growing by leaps and bounds, the Department of Statistics 2016 Economic Census revealed.

The country has some 14,930 private establishments providing general and specialised medical services, dental services, hospital services, dialysis centres, child day-care, residential care and maternity homes among others, in 2015.

These establishments contributed RM16.8bil to Malaysia’s economy in 2015, compared to RM10.4bil from 9,152 such establishments in 2010.

Some 121,088 people were employed in this sector in 2015, out of which 88.5% are full-time employees, 2.2% are paid part-time employees while the remaining 9.3% are owners or unpaid family workers.

Women dominated this sector with 83,887 engaged persons (69.3%), compared to men at 37,201 (30.7%) in 2015.

Female workers outnumbered male wor­kers in all qualifications, except at the post-graduate level where more men (5,000) were employed than women (2,874).

Most health and social workers possessed at least an SPM or SPM (V) certificate (26.5%), diploma qualification (28.7%) or advanced diploma or Bachelor’s degree (23.8%). Only 2.6% or 3,222 of the workers had below SPM or SPM (V) qualification.

Overall the workers took home RM3.68bil in salaries and wages in 2015, compared to RM2.1bil in 2010.

Employees in private hospital services topped the salary list at RM1.84bil in 2015, followed by employees in general medical services at RM737mil and specialised medical services at RM300.6mil.

The average monthly salary in the private health and social work services sector in 2015 was RM2,795.

Employees serving in specialised medical services recorded the highest average monthly salary at RM3,352, followed by hospital services at RM3,317 and medical laboratories at RM3,065.

Selangor has the highest number of esta­blishments providing health and social work services at 3,883, followed by Kuala Lumpur at 2,299 and Johor at 1,713 in 2015.

Women-owned establishments in this sector also increased from 3,122 in 2010 to 4,699 in 2015.

The highest increase in the number of women-owned outfits between 2010 and 2015 was recorded in child day-care activities (784), other human health services (172) and residential care activities (138).

More information can be obtained from the Statistics Department’s website at www.dosm.gov.my.