Quality Objectives At 3 Military Hospital Depts Not Achieved

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The audit report said doctors at the military medical department of the Tuanku Mizan Military Hospital had to conduct annual health checks on 25 to 30 personnel and 12 to 15 senior officers every day.KUALA LUMPUR: The quality objectives of health service management in the three departments of the armed forces hospital (HAT) were not achieved due to lack of manpower and the heavy workload of medical officers.
According to the Auditor-General’s Report 2021 Series 1, quality objectives at the military medical department of the Tuanku Mizan Military Hospital stipulated that 70% of the reports from the senior medical officers of the Armed Forces (MAF) should be completed within a month, but this was not achieved in the years 2018 and 2021 due to the demanding daily workload of medical officers.
According to the report, the medical officers had to conduct annual health checks on 25 to 30 personnel and 12 to 15 senior officers every day with the limitation of only one specialist doctor.
“For the year 2021, medical officers were caught up in unexpected assignments such as being assigned to treat Covid-19 patients and to carry out the vaccination programme implemented by the department,” it said.
The report also found that the quality objectives at the medical and orthopaedic specialist clinics and HAT anesthesia unit of the Royal Malaysian Navy (RMN) base in Lumut, Perak, were not achieved due to the need for specialist doctors to make routine visits to the ward before treatment could be administered at the clinic.
The clinics had pre-set that as much as 80% of patients should be given treatment within 90 minutes of registering to see a specialist doctor, but this was not achieved in 2018 until 2020 while the anaesthesia unit did not achieve the quality objective of ensuring that 90% from the list of elective cases started anaesthesia before or at 8.30am for the period 2018 to 2021.
The report found that the hospital’s specialist doctors and surgeons needed to go to the ward prior to services in the clinic being carried out, and the situation caused specialists to start the routine in the specialist clinic and operating room late, thus affecting the treatment time for patients while appointments were still recorded manually.
Following that, the report recommended that HAT, the MAF health services division and the defence ministry take action to review the workload of the medical teams to improve service delivery.
The report also recommended that the staffing needs should be reviewed before each HAT division achieves optimal service, in addition to using hospital information systems to record patient information to replace manual methods.
“(But) overall, the audit found that HAT service management was implemented efficiently and effectively to achieve its objective of providing health services to MAF personnel and their dependents,” the report stated. - FMT

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