PETALING JAYA: As there are only 67 geriatric specialists serving the entire country, the Health Ministry has taken certain measures to ensure that elderly care remains accessible.
The Health Ministry is planning to address the issue of the lack of geriatric doctors in the upcoming 13th Malaysia Plan (13MP).
While that is in the works, outreach programmes and the cluster hospital set-up are some of the efforts that have been implemented to ensure service delivery even at hospitals that do not have a resident specialist.
For hospitals without resident geriatric specialists, the ministry said services are provided by internal medicine specialists, with referrals made to geriatric specialists at nearby hospitals if further treatment is required.
Aside from that, with the cluster hospital initiative, geriatric specialists from the lead hospitals will also help with the delivery of service at hospitals without a geriatric specialist who belongs to the same cluster.
Through an outreach programme, geriatric specialists will also conduct visits to hospitals without specialists that do not belong to the same cluster.
With the Seamless Geriatric Care (SGC) initiative, geriatric patient care is integrated in seven public hospitals and 20 health clinics in Selangor, Kuala Lumpur, Negri Sembilan, Sabah, and Sarawak.
“Under the 13MP, plans have been made to address the issue of lack of resident geriatricians to ensure the expansion of service, whereby specialists will be placed at six additional hospitals,” it said in a written reply in the Dewan Negara dated March 11.
The ministry has also outlined initiatives under the Elderly Healthcare Service Action Plan 2023–2030, which is meant to attract more medical professionals to specialise in geriatric care in Malaysia.
Among them are increasing promotional efforts for geriatric subspeciality training; expanding the number of scholarships available; and positioning geriatric medicine as a field with strong career advancement opportunities.
Among the 67 geriatric specialists currently in service, 16 were in private practice, it said.
“Of this number, 37 are serving in the Health Ministry’s hospitals, 14 in university hospitals, and 16 in private hospitals,” the ministry said.
The ministry said there were 20 Health Ministry hospitals nationwide offering geriatric subspeciality services with 37 resident geriatricians.
However, states such as Perlis, Terengganu and the Federal Territories of Putrajaya and Labuan do not have geriatric units.
The ministry said this in response to Senator Dr RA Lingeshwaran, who enquired about the government’s strategies for providing geriatric services in light of the country’s ageing population.
Dr Lingeshwaran also asked about the ministry’s plans for Penang, which is expected to become the second-oldest state by 2030.
On geriatric services in Penang, the ministry said there are currently five hospitals in the state which provide geriatric services, with four of them having 25 geriatric beds.
In July last year, Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad acknowledged the lack of geriatric specialists in the country.
He said the Health Ministry would hold discussions with the Higher Education Ministry on master’s programmes in geriatric medicine to increase the number of specialists in the field, as Malaysia is expected to become an aged nation by 2040.
