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Govt looks to hospital-based education to solve specialist doctor shortage
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An illustration of a doctor in a hospital. (Shutterstock/sfam_photo)
T
hrough the omnibus health bill, the government and lawmakers are looking to allow certain hospitals to conduct their own postgraduate education as an answer to the country’s lack of specialist doctors.
The plan, however, has been met with skepticism from medical professional associations and universities, who instead argued for the optimization of existing policies to address the government’s poor administration and distribution of specialists.
The omnibus health bill seeks to supplant 10 existing laws and is aimed at bringing in sweeping changes to the health sector. Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin handed to lawmakers on Wednesday a document of inventory of issues (DIM) the bill should cover and the government's latest opinions and proposed changes to the bill following weeks of public discussion, as deliberations are set to continue at the House of Representatives.
To achieve the World Health Organization’s recommended ratio of 0.28 specialist doctors per 1,000 people, Indonesia, with a population of about 271 million, needs an additional 30,000 specialists on top of its existing 51,000, Health Ministry Director General for Health Workers Arianti Anaya told a public discussion last week.
“The total of 21 [post-graduate medical schools in the country] produce about 2,700 specialists per year. Knowing that we need another 30,000, it means that we need over 10 years [to catch up],” she said.
Aside from a slow production line, the country’s problem with specialist doctors also extends to poor distribution. According to ministry data, around 40 percent of regional general hospitals (RSUD) throughout the country cannot fulfill the minimum seven branches of medical specialists, since most specialists are centralized in Jakarta.
Omnibus changes
