“Uberising” Ambulance Service? – MOH Slammed For Raising Proposal

Patients will also have the option to choose to go to a private or government hospital through the proposed app.

Ministry of Health (MOH) Deputy Secretary-General (finance) Norazman Ayob recently said that the health ministry is exploring the idea of e-hailing ambulance services, pooling public and private ambulances via an app.

A post on X (formerly Twitter) by health news website CodeBlue mentioned the ambulance’s journey can be tracked and users can choose to go to MOH or private hospitals.

The health ministry is exploring collaborations with private hospitals to “Uberise” ambulance services with the aim to expedite emergency responses, CodeBlue reported.

Norazman said the plan is to move away from hospitals having to own their ambulances, and create a shared pool of government and private ambulances instead, that’s accessible through an app rather than the 999 emergency hotline that caters to only public ambulances.

With the app, any ambulance (MOH or private) that is nearest to the caller will attend to the emergency call and take them to the closest hospital, be it government or private.

People will also have the option to choose to go to a private or government hospital through the app.

Norazman later clarified on X that there will be no charges imposed on the patient or family members when they use the ambulance services from the app if the ambulance is sending them to the nearest government hospital.

However, if the patient wants to go to a private hospital, they will have to pay for the ambulance service.

Twitterjaya responds with criticism

The announcement of this idea did not sit well with many Malaysians. Many thought it is an unnecessary move which will only add more layers to an emergency situation.

Some even chimed in saying an app would be ineffective during an emergency as a patient might not be calm enough to open the app, wait for it to load, call an ambulance and choose a hospital.

How can an e-hailing ambulance service app help?

A pool of MOH and non-MOH ambulances accessed via an app would operate like commercial e-hailing services, which could expedite an emergency response because the caller has direct access to nearby ambulances instead of going through a 999 operator that handles all sorts of emergencies beyond medical cases.

For emergency cases requiring ambulance services, 999 calls need to be further diverted to the particular public hospital’s Medical Emergency Coordinating Centre (MECC) that will then send out an ambulance. 

Hence, an ambulance service app could potentially skip two steps: the 999 operator and the MECC – assuming that paramedics remain in ambulances at all times, even when they are not currently responding to an emergency call.

A national audit report released last year revealed that the MOH fell short of its 50 percent target for responding to Priority 1 cases, achieving only 31.5 per cent to 41.8 per cent between 2017 and 2021. Priority 1 cases refer to life-threatening emergencies requiring immediate medical attention such as strokes, breathing difficulties, and accidents.

The shortfall was attributed to two main factors: delays in activating the response team at the nearest hospital, and significant distances between emergency sites and hospitals, ranging from 60km to 443km.

Get more stories like this to your inbox by signing up for our newsletter.