SOCSO Health Screening – all is not well

Something is amiss with the health screening programme recently launched by SOCSO (see Star report Two million Socso members eligible for free health screening)

PETALING JAYA: About two million private sector employees will be eligible for free medical check-ups from the Social Security Organisation (Socso).
Human Resources Minister Datuk Seri Dr S. Subramaniam is expected to announce the mechanism for the health screening for Socso members today.
The move will benefit workers if they contract any non-communicable diseases like diabetes and hypertension, among other things. It will also spur the workers to be more aware of their health.
The initiative, announced under Budget 2013 by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, is targeted at Socso contributors aged 40 years and above. It is believed that the free check-ups will be applicable to Socso members who are still working.

While laudable there have been quite a few hiccups in the implementation judging by the feedback in our Malaysian Doctors’ forum, Dobbs
* There was initial confusion amongst the GPs as to which labs are amongst the panel/assigned labs
* There was confusion as to how the payments would be made – apparently the doctors have to make the payments to the labs upfront prior to reimbursement from SOCSO, on supposedly negotiated rates, but some labs may not have been informed as per these doctors’ experience:

Spoke to 3 labs yesterday. They will charge RM25 for the blood package but the rates for the pap smear are above the recommended of SOCSO- got quotes of RM11, RM14 and RM 15. So how?

This morning had a confrontation with *** Lab.This lab was one of the assigned labs by Socso. Samples were sent to them.Results refused to release unless I pay them cash.Reason: I got no account with them. To open an account,a waiting time of 6 months is required.A minimal usage of rm 500.00 / month is needed before they allow credit facility,otherwise its’ COD. My ‘ears are on fire’ when I heard this rubbish.I think they are not hard up for business.I’m looking for other lab.So those who got no account with **** Lab,be wary of this rubbish.

* GPs are given a web portal to apply as a provider but yet there are many problems on the SOCSO end:

I have registered my clinic as a a SOCSO HSP clinic in late December last year. Until now I am still unable to login. Patients with coupons keep coming to my clinic for free examinations and blood tests. My e-mails to SOCSO were not answered. The phones were either engaged or nobody picked up the phone. It seems the labs are experiencing the same problem. In short I gather the whole system is not functioning yet.

I had this problem of being unable to login to perkeso site. Finally discovered that the original password did not work. (a work around was discovered by the doctors in Dobbs forum)

i just started doing hsp last week. Males only. Can’t find any x ray centre willing to do mammogram for 110.00 can’t log in to socso also. No further word from socso,after initial registration. They let us wondering in the dark. I feel the programme is not ready for implementation yet.

Called SOCSO today. It’s servers are not able to cope with the sudden surge in service.So alot of drs cannot log in.No solution in sight yet.

have problems too.
hot line not answering.
forms dont come out well…2 male patients ok. the female patients some some form/ one page missing,
lab result dont know who shld fil.
until then..cannot gaet payment

The portal is taking ages to respond. Until such a time when this is sorted, i will not be accepting any vouchers.

I successfully registered as a panel doctor/clinic to only find that I could not log in — being told that my password was incorrect. No choice but to ask from admin for password and was given one generated by the web site itself, but with instruction that I could change to password of my own choice. Able to log in with the supplied password but cannot find any place in the site where I can change the password. E-mail admin few days ago — no reply.
I anticipate there will be lots of difficulties with this half-cooked endeavour.

After all the work done,we need to go online and put relevant data of pts. Having done that,the website said it is 92,97% complete.it could not go to 100%,despite doing whatever that are needed.called up socso.reply? I don‘t know,that‘was the shocking reply.the whole thing is just a bloody half baked scheme.

It’s a pity, a scheme with good intentions but very poorly implemented. Vouchers issued but the entire mechanism seems to be in need of review – a hotline should be answered, a web portal should be working properly and tested, payment mechanisms need to be well defined and agreed upon – all this should have been done properly way before the vouchers were given out.

As a final food for thought, while there is some benefit to routine physical (perhaps in diagnosing new cases of certain illnesses) there is some evidence to show in fact Routine Physicals Don’t Save Lives