The nation faces a shortage of nearly 11,000 specialists, nursing vacancies of about 18%
PETALING JAYA: Malaysia risks building hospitals it cannot staff unless the government urgently addresses a deepening healthcare workforce crisis, the Malaysian Medical Association (MMA) has warned, even as it welcomed plans for a new 500-bed public hospital in the city.
Cautioning that infrastructure investment alone will not resolve the country’s healthcare woes, MMA president Datuk Dr Thirunavukarasu Rajoo said the nation faces a shortage of nearly 11,000 specialists, nursing vacancies of about 18% – or some 14,700 unfilled positions out of 84,000 – and a stark collapse in junior doctor uptake, with only 529 of the 5,000 positions recently offered to medical graduates being accepted.
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“A hospital is not its walls. It is the doctors, nurses and specialists inside it and Malaysia has a problem that we cannot build our way out of,” he said, following the Selangor government’s decision to expedite land allocation for the proposed facility.
Thirunavukarasu pointed to Hospital Pasir Gudang as a cautionary tale, a completed facility that could not be fully operationalised due to insufficient doctors and nurses.
“That was not a failure of construction. It was a failure of workforce planning,“ he said.
“Our hospitals are not short of demand. They are short of staff.”
While acknowledging that the Petaling district’s population of more than 2.3 million, including over 800,000 in Petaling Jaya, warrants additional healthcare capacity, the MMA argued that existing resources, particularly in the private sector, remain underutilised.
Petaling Jaya alone has 12 private hospitals with more than 1,400 beds and over 450 registered private clinics.
Thirunavukarasu said the Health Ministry should expand programmes enabling public patients to receive treatment at private facilities, noting that nearly 100 private hospitals had already been shortlisted to provide services including cardiology, nephrology and radiology imaging.
“The capacity already exists. We should be using it,” he said.
The MMA also pressed for stronger investment in healthcare digitalisation, arguing that patients were far more frustrated by long waiting times, misplaced records and repeated tests than by the absence of new buildings.
Thirunavukarasu highlighted the Health Ministry’s plans to fully digitalise primary healthcare by 2027 and establish a single national health record accessible across both public and private facilities.
This system would allow patients on months-long public hospital waiting lists to be referred swiftly to private providers without losing continuity of care, he said.
“No new building. No new land. Just a faster solution for the patient,“ he said.
He further urged policymakers to address the root causes of the workforce shortage through sustained healthcare funding, improved recruitment and retention policies and the creation of an independent Health Service Commission – a body that would manage healthcare recruitment, postings and career progression outside the constraints of the broader civil service structure.
“Doctors are not leaving because others are taking them. They are leaving because the system pushes them out,” he said.
Thirunavukarasu stressed that resolving the crisis required coordinated action from the Finance Ministry, Public Service Department and Higher Education Ministry, not just the Health Ministry. “By all means build the hospital. But ensure the workforce is planned before the first brick is laid,” he said.
