Foreign investment in hospitals welcome
Foreign investment in hospitals welcome
JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia is opening its door for foreign
businesses seeking to invest in hospitals on the condition that
the directors be locals, Minister of Health Sujudi said Saturday.
"If they (the foreigners) want to become chiefs of the finance
or administration section, there is no problem. But the director
of the hospital must be an Indonesian," Sujudi said.
Another condition is that the foreign investors must have
local counterparts.
In addition, the hospitals should not hire foreign physicians
unless no Indonesian is qualified enough in the field, Sujudi
added.
The minister admitted that Indonesia still lacks medical
experts due to the rapid development of medical technology.
Sujudi said that he had received information from the Foreign
Investment Board that two foreign investors wanted to establish
hospitals in Jakarta and Tangerang, just west of here.
He said he remembered that one of the two was from Australia.
Not only Jakarta, but many other parts of the country are
still in need of hospitals, Sujudi said, encouraging both local
and foreign investors to do the business.
He underlined that the foreign investors should comply with
the policy on the "social function" of hospitals.
Under the policy, hospitals should provide 25 percent of their
beds to poor people free of charge. However, in many cases this
policy does not seem to work because of the government's slack
monitoring. What's more, it is likely that poor people would not
dare enter the gate of an up-market hospital.
Therefore, the government has introduced a new policy to
oblige luxury hospitals to provide funds for the development of
community health centers.
"The MMC (Metropolitan Medical Center) has done it. And I
think some other hospitals, too, have done the same thing,"
Sujudi said.
He encouraged private hospitals to take part in the
government-sponsored health card program, scheduled to be
launched on the National Health Day on Nov. 12. Under the new
program, card holders will have access to free health
service.(sim)