HOSPITAL WOES OVER

HOSPITAL WOES OVER

IMMEDIATE FINANCIAL JAB FOR KLANG HOSPITAL

WHAT AN EFFECTIVE SOLUTION BY THE HEALTH MINISTRY.

WILL THEY KEEP UP THIS GOOD AND EFFICIENT SERVICE?

IS THE GOOD WORK SUSTAINABLE?

Following The Star report yesterday, the Health Ministry immediately approved $90,000 for the purchase of 27 split air-con units. The air-con started working again at 12.15am yesterday after the round-the-clock repairs.

In addition, $13mil will be allocated for mechanical and electrical repairs, said Deputy Health Minister Dr Abdul Latiff Ahmad. According to Dr. Latiff, preventive maintenance had been carried out at the hospital, and that breakdowns were unpredictable.

“Let this be a reminder to hospitals in Selangor to be vigilant in inspecting and maintaining their infrastructure,” said Dr. Lim Thuang Seng, the EXCO in charge of health in Selangor.

The breakdown is said to be the worst since the system started giving problems in 2002.

Is it true that the hospital actually had preventive maintainance as what Dr Latiff said? If so, then, what the hell is the problem as it was reported that the aircon and electrical system had been giving problems since year 2002 and it had to take 2 years and a near disaster coupled with a front-page report for the Health Ministry to inject $90,000ringgit to replace 27 units of aircon and a proposed allocation of $13million to over-haul the M & E system - A total of $13.09mil is only required and the hospital had waited for more than 2-years to get the money?

Then, we have Dr. Lim Thuang Seng, the Selangor EXCO for Health who commented that Selangor Hospitals must be vigilant in inspecting and maintaining their infrastructure. I believe, the problem in hospitals is not about lack of inspection and maintainance by the staffs but a lack of a structured framework for an effective facility maintenance management system of which yearly budget allocation must be disbursed timely for regular maintenance and repair of the M & E services, plus a planned replacement program for equipments and infrastructures based on the product life-cycle. Replacement programs must be in place, not as and when it fails.

Does our Ministries understand what it means by "Replacement Programs"?

Just look at the water supply system in Malaysia - the authority replace pipes and pumpsets as and when they received reports of failures.

Until we had this structured system of management of services, we will continue to hear and read of such problematic issues, consistent and continuous failures; and it looks like the Ministries had only a TINKERING SYSTEM, where they will only get things done when a disaster strikes or when a system is down completely.