Paper glitch harms referral system among hospitals

Triwik Kurniasari , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Thu, 07/24/2008 10:41 AM | City

Cipto Mangunkusumo General Hospital (RSCM) is facing administrative hurdles in implementing a new referral system despite a memorandum of understanding signed between the hospital and five others in May.

"The MOU is an attempt to tackle the hospital's overload problem. The city administration had also approved the agreement," RSCM director Akmal Taher said Wednesday.

"The implementation of the new system, however, cannot immediately be applied in the near future because it is quite complicated. It's about technical problems, like arranging the administration. We will discuss it more with the five hospitals and Deputy Governor Prijanto," he said.

He said when the system had been set up, RSCM outpatients could be referred to one of the five hospitals.

"It might be hard to assure the outpatients to move into one of the five hospitals. That's why we need to constantly inform the patients about this new system," he said.

Akmal previously said the poor referral system was behind the overload problem at RSCM.

He added that many public health centers in the city often referred their patients to medical treatments at RSCM even for relatively minor ailments like the flu or colds.

RSCM, on Jl. Salemba Raya, Central Jakarta, is often crowded with patients who are referred by local hospitals across the country.

Many outpatients used to spend the night in one of the facility's buildings without the permission of the hospital's management, often staying there with relatives because they lacked enough money to pay transportation expenses back and forth to RSCM.

Indonesian Hospital Association chairman Adib Yahya said a referral scheme was issued by the Health Ministry in the 2003 National Health System.

"There is a system for referring patients, but it doesn't run smoothly because of the lack of implementation and promotion," said Adib.

"The health centers or family doctors should be the first to take care of the patients. If they cannot handle the patients, they can send them to hospitals nearby. If the hospitals are not able to take care of the patients, they can refer them to hospitals that are more qualified.

"RSCM, which is a national referral hospital, should only handle patients with super special cases, like those who suffer from high stadium cancer," he said

Medical expert Muhammad Nasser fully supported the MOU between RSCM and the five hospitals, saying the cooperation was a great start in reducing patient overload, especially outpatients, in the hospital.

Indonesian Medical Doctors Association (IDI) chairman Fahmi Idris said he urged the government and administrations to improve the referral system.

He said developing hospitals outside Jakarta and strengthening family doctors could improve the system.

"So far, family doctors mainly treat only rich patients. This is wrong. They should also handle the poor ones. A family doctor ideally takes care of 1,500 families so that they can always monitor the patients' condition," he said, adding the IDI was trying to develop family doctor networks in some regions of the country.

Comments (0) | Post comment

A | A | A |