KUCHING: A group of Ministry Of Health (MoH) hospitals in the southern zone of Sarawak has been integrated under one administration and function as one cluster (organisation).
“This group of hospitals is called the Sarawak Southern Cluster Hospital by the Ministry of Health,” explained Sarawak General Hospital (SGH) director Dr Ngian Hie Ung on Thursday (Aug 13).
“This cluster is not related to the Covid-19 clusters,” she stressed, adding that it was actually a grouping of MoH hospitals (specialist and non-specialist) by geographical locations within the state.
According to a pamphlet, the hospitals are aligned in terms of services and patient flow.
Under the Sarawak Southern Cluster Hospital, SGH is the lead hospital while the other hospitals are Sarawak Heart Centre (PJS), Sentosa Hospital, RCBM Hospital, Bau Hospital, Serian Hospital, Lundu Hospital and Simunjan Hospital.
The objectives of the cluster is to provide specialist services to all patients within the coverage of the network of hospitals involved and implement more efficient and effective service delivery by optimising the use of existing resources, strategic communication and sharing of technology.
Other objectives are to strengthen and enhance the competency of staff in delivering quality services through strong networking and continuous training and teaching in cluster hospitals and elevating healthcare staff satisfaction by redistribution of workload and increasing customers’ satisfaction by improving productivity.
Dr Ngian explained that the Sarawak Southern Cluster Hospital was formed in 2019 and that there were other cluster hospitals in the country.
“Basically, these MoH initiatives started in Malaysia as a public health transformation programme in 2016,” she said.
According to Dr Ngian, when SGH becomes overcrowded with patients and the quality of services is affected, “We will transfer some stable patients who just need some care to Serian or Bau Hospital so that the vacant beds that we have at SGH will be filled by patients who need more acute attention.
“We will not throw the patients away. If a patient requires a specialist, we will provide one. This collaboration between the hospitals aims to offer the best care for patients all over Sarawak.”
